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THE WRECK 

An Historical and a Critical Study 
of the Administrations of Theodore 
Roosevelt and of William Howard Taft 



BY 



HENRY CLAY HANSBROUGH 




NEW YORK 
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1913 






Copyright, 1913, by 
The Neale Publishing Company 



0'C!,A35 779 5 



One of the Seven was wont to say that laws were like cob- 
webs; where the small flies were caught, and the great break 
through. 

— Bacon 



Oh, for a forty-parson power to chant 
Thy praise, Hypocrisy! Oh, for a hymn 

Loud as the virtues thou dost loudly vaunt, 
Not practice. 

— Byron 



Sire, it is worse than a crime, it is a blunder. 

— Joseph FoucM 



PREFACE 

WE plume ourselves upon our rapid 
advance in Civilization ; and yet 
no people ever retrograded po- 
litically as the American nation is retro- 
grading at this moment. In the name of 
Progress we are going back to Barbarism. 
I have reference to what must certainly fol- 
low when we have reached the limit in our 
present spasmodic spell of Wild-eyed Poli- 
tics, if limit there be. 

During the past dozen years politicians 
of all parties, each trying to outdo the other 
in proposals of a radical nature, have plied 
the arts of the Demagog with such success 
as completely to overthrow our earlier sys- 
tem of Government, and the cry is for still 
further achievements in irrational schemes 
of legislation. 

The fatuous thing known as ^^Pure De- 

7 



PREFACE 

mocracy," which always works its own de- 
struction, is now gripping the Republic to its 
death. In the end it will prove to be the 
handmaiden of devouring monopoly, that 
other deleterious force now all controlling 
in the country's business affairs. 

In The Wreck I have aimed to explain 
how it all came about, and to describe the 
methods of the leaders who are responsible 
for the catastrophe. 

H. C. H. 
Washington, D. C. 

August 1, 1913. 



8 



i. 



CONTENTS 

PART I 

PAGE 

The Rise of Radicalism 11 

Ripening of the Trust 23 

Roosevelt in the Saddle 42 

Monopoly's Rapid Pace 70 

The Moral Effect 86 

The Political Results 95 

PART II 

Four Years of Taft 115 

Some Tariff Bungling 135 

More Bad Politics 161 

Taft and the Trusts 165 

Mr. Wilson and His Party 174 



PART I 
THE RISE OF RADICALISM 



THE WRECK 

PART I 
THE RISE OF RADICALISM 

WHEN in 1901 Theodore Roosevelt 
came into power, almost imme- 
diately two great dangers con- 
fronted the Republic,— first, the supremacy 
of Monopoly; and, second, a condition of 
endless Political Pandemonium. Both have 
come to pass. Under his fostering care 
they arrived quite promptly. The length 
of their stay depends entirely upon the time 
that will be required for the people to re- 
cover from the state of mental intoxication 
in which Roosevelt left them at the end of 
his despotic rule. 

The term ^^came into power" is fittingly 

11 



THE WRECK 

used, for Roosevelt was the whole Govern- 
ment, through methods which he at once 
proceeded to adopt, — methods unlike any 
the country had known before. His acces- 
sion to the Presidency was in consequence 
of a most regrettable tragedy, the first of a 
series of violent shocks which continued to 
the close of his demoralizing reign. 

There can be no doubt that the political 
excesses he brought about are the natural 
concomitant of the other forbidding thing, 
— the triumph of monopoly. The theory 
upon which this statement rests is thus ex- 
plained by Guizot: 

"The sovereignty of the people is a great force which some- 
times interferes to break up an inequality which has become 
excessive, or a power which has become absolute, when so- 
ciety can no longer accommodate itself to them; as despotism 
sometimes interferes, in the name of order, violently to re- 
store a society on the brink of dissolution. It is only a 
weapon of attack and destruction, never an instrument for the 
foundation of liberty. It is not a principle of government, 
it is a terrible but transient dictatorship, exercised by the 
multitude, — a dictatorship that ceases, and that ought to 
cease as soon as the multitude has accomplished its work of 
destruction." 



12 



THE RISE OF RADICALISM 

As has been suggested, the tragic death of 
William McKinley marked a change in 
American politics of far-reaching conse- 
quences. It was a change which together 
with its results the present historian feels 
quite free to discuss, even at the risk of re- 
flecting somewhat upon the party to whose 
principles, so often misapplied, he still ad- 
heres. 

Assuming the task with malice toward 
none, but rather with sympathy for those 
who, being human, have made their human 
mistakes, he is aware nevertheless that who- 
ever writes truthfullv of some remarkable 
events of the Twentieth Century's first dec- 
ade will not escape the accusation of per- 
sonal bias. 

To do even partial justice to the subject, 
one must have been a part of the intricate 
and greatly misunderstood government'^1 
machinery at Washington, and to have 
known somewhat intimately the statesmen 
of the times. 

The turning point in the larger politics 

13 



THE WRECK 

of the nation dates back to the Philadelphia 
convention of 1900, when McKinley and 
Roosevelt were nominated as the Repub- 
lican candidates. 

It is claimed by some that the radical 
movement began with the appearance of 
Bryan as the leader of his party in 1896, 
but until recently the Democrats have had 
but little to do with federal affairs within 
the past sixteen years. 

And as for radicalism and its strange 
freaks the Republicans have been giving 
Bryan and his followers a few exhibitions 
well calculated to make the former advo- 
cates of free and unlimited coinage of silver 
slink away in confusion. By comparison it 
has been the difference between a primer 
lesson and a college course. 

Events of a thrilling nature followed 
rapidly the making of the Republican ticket 
in the Quaker city. It is matter of common 
knowledge that Senators Mark Hanna and 
Thomas C. Piatt were the dominant figures 
in the management of that convention. 

14 



THE EISE OF RADICALISM 

They belonged to the same wing of the 
party, — the Stalwart wing; yet they dis- 
agreed widely in regard to the complete 
ticket. Piatt favored Roosevelt for the 
vice-presidency; Hanna was bitterly op- 
posed to him. For a time there was every 
prospect of a permanent rupture between 
the two recognized leaders, and much mid- 
night electricity was consumed before peace 
was declared. 

In the matter of the party platform 
Hanna and Piatt were in close accord, and 
in this regard the delegates, for the most 
part, were of the same mind; for that was 
before the day of serious perplexities in the 
matter of party policy. Insurgency was 
then only in the bud. Leastwise it had not 
yet ripened into a formidable force. 

It is quite generally believed that Piatt 
demanded the nomination of Roosevelt for 
second place on the ticket in order to get rid 
of him as governor of New York, to which 
place he would have been renominated but 
for the final action taken at the Phila- 

15 



THE WRECK 

delpMa gathering. This belief, however, is 
not well founded. 

Piatt was a man who had had experience 
in polities, both national and state. He was 
a pastmaster in the game long before Hanna 
took his first local lessons in Ohio. 

Hanna 's success in nominating McKinley 
at St. Louis in 1896, when the country 
seemed ripe for ^^a change" and the way to 
Eepublican victory was easy, had made him 
boldly aggressive and somewhat dictatorial. 
If a thing did not suit Hanna personally, 
then it wasn't good for the country. He 
wanted McKinley for a second term above 
everything else. Piatt was not opposed to 
McKinley, although Hanna suspected that 
he was. The thing that Avas troubling Piatt 
was that he scented the danger of defeat. 
This was too remote a possibility to impress 
Hanna. Piatt entertained such fear of 
McKinley 's reelection that he was trying in 
every way to guard against mistakes. j 

He knew then what so many of us have 
learned since, — that a condition of pros- 

16 



THE RISE OF RADICALISM 

\ 
perity, even the semblance of itjNproduces 

among the people an atmosphere of arro- 
gance. It is this that has confounded so 
many politicians who, having made a strug- 
gle in behalf of a season of good times, re- 
turned home to find the harvesters planning 
to *^turn the rascals out," — *^the rascals'' 
always meaning the majority party. 

Only four years before when, for whatso- 
ever reason, the country was passing 
through a business depression and the Re- 
publicans, having become unusually numer- 
ous, were clamoring for a return to power, 
the people appeared to be in a very humble 
mood. Now, however, after a period of ap- 
parent fatness to the discerning eye the vast 
electorate seemed to be upon the verge of 
revolt. 

It was the tendency toward powerf vil busi- 
ness combinations, — that is, railroad and 
industrial consolidations, — and not the 
*' natural perversity of man" that made the 
people irritable, uneasy, and difficult to 
please. This was the psychology of the sit- 

17 



THE WEECK 

nation, and no one was quicker to feel its 
influence than was the ^^easy boss^' of New 
York. 

Such things, however, made no impres- 
sion upon Mark Hanna. To his mind the 
rapid increase and growth of trusts and 
combinations was positive evidence sustain- 
ing his own political wisdom, — a true in- 
dication of ideal national progress. 

A very considerable number of the dele- 
gates took the Piatt view of it; they were 
fresh from the people and knew what the 
voters were talking about. Apprehensive 
of party defeat they, along with the perspi- 
cacious Piatt, wanted a man for second 
place who would add strength to the ticket. 

Not that they questioned the ability or 
the Republicanism of McKinley, or were 
opposed to his renomination for any sub- 
stantial reason. He was an ideal candidate 
from many points of view; he had served 
the country and his party well and faith- 
fully. . 

Moreover, he was the kind of man who 

18 I 



THE RISE OF RADICALISM 

won tlie admiration even of those who dis- 
agreed with his political principles. If he 
was afflicted with any human weakness it 
was that he had no enemies, — a reversal of 
the adage that a man is loved for the ene- 
mies he makes. 

As he himself subsequently said to Sena- 
tor Carter, of Montana: ''We appear to 
have pleased almost everyone. Our prom- 
ises have been carried out. Peace and 
plenty have returned to the land ; what more 
can we do ? Strange as it may seem, I am 
oppressed by the abundant happiness that 
has come to the country." 

Two weeks from the date of that utter- 
ance he was shot down at Buffalo. 

The pressure upon Senator Hanna was 
so great that he was compelled to yield ; not, 
however, until Senator Piatt had given him 
such positive assurance in regard to Colonel 
Roosevelt as to mollify the aggressiveness 
of the McKinley manager. The final scene 
between the two great party leaders re- 
mains a memorable one. 

19 



THE WRECK 

^^Tom, you are an old fool," roared 
Hanna when Piatt, having been sent for 
late in the night, came into the Ohio sena- 
tor's room. 

^^I know it, Mark,'' replied Piatt in his 
quiet wa}^; ^'but when you're as old as I 
am you'll not be as much of a boy as you 



are now." 



11 



*'That cowboy will ruin the country, 
continued Hanna. ^'Nothing can keep him 
out of the White House four years from 
now. Is that your game, for the Lord's 
saker' 

**Not for the Lord's sake, Mark," replied 
Piatt. 

*^I should hope not." 

*^But for the party's sake. Military 
heroes have always been popular, you 
know." And the New Yorker smiled 

faintlv. 

«/ 

^^ Military hero!" exclaimed Hanna. 
^^ You are as crazy as he is, more so, I guess, 
for you're old enough to know better." 

^^But less dangerous, you think*? Now, 

20 






THE RISE OF RADICALISM 

Mark, I know him better than you do. 
He's not at all dangerous. ' ' 

The two leaders looked at each other. 
Their silence was akin to an explosion 
of eloquence. After a significant pause 
Hanna asked: 

Do you guarantee hini, Tom'?'' 
I'm not in the guarantee business, 
Mark, but I repeat what I said, — that he is 
not dangerous." 

There was another pause, during which 
Piatt's guarded guarantee seemed to pene- 
trate Hanna 's subconsciousness. 

*'Well," remarked Hanna, ^'have your 
own way; you'd better go to bed." 

This brief conversation, the climax to an 
intense struggle running through the two 
previous days and nights, took place at two 
o'clock of the morning of the convention; 
and a few hours later Theodore Roosevelt 
was nominated as the vice-presidential can- 
didate without opposition. 

Both elements in the party had been sat- 
isfied, — the conservatives with McKinley 

21 



THE WRECK 

and the radicals with Roosevelt. In the 
language of a western delegate who had 
been a member of a Rough Rider regiment, 
the campaign would ^^have some ginger in 
it'^ and the trusts would ^^have to sit up and 
take notice." 

Such was the confidence of the Roosevelt 
following thirteen years ago. There was 
no lack of ^^ ginger" in the campaign. 



22 



I 



EIPENING OF THE TRUST 

THOMAS COLLIER PLATT was 
peculiarly a political genius. His 
knowledge of men, which was ex- 
ceedingly good, was no greater than his 
knowledge in regard to what was required 
to hold ''the organization" together and re- 
new the life of the party as conditions 
arose. 

If he had what in political parlance is 
known as the ^^fine Italian hand," it was 
supported by a keen mind and a far-seeing 
eye. He knew instinctively what the 
people wanted, and had been known to in- 
dulge in warning lectures to those of his 
colleagues who were somewhat lacking in 
regard for public opinion. It was this that 
gave him his superior grasp of national 
politics and made him the ^^easy boss" in 
New York. 

23 



THE WRECK 

Where Mark Hanna's control reached the 
point of sheer force and at times was ahnost 
brutal, Tom Piatt prevailed by the exercise 
of persuasive reason. In his dealings with 
party leaders it was his custom to ask them 
what they wanted in the way of recogni- 
tion. After that he would quietly request 
them to indicate what they really expected 
to get, pointing out the danger there might 
be in demanding too much. 

If the delegate or state leader was not 
satisfied with this and went to Hanna with 
his troubles, without the least bit of cere- 
mony he would be told very positively and 
conclusively what he could or could not 
have. 

At Philadelphia a large number of the 
delegates favored Roosevelt, as did Senator 
Piatt, because, on account of the part he 
had taken in the Cuban campaign, he filled 
the popular eye as a hero. It has almost 
always turned out that the party which rec- 
ognizes the war hero is sure of success at 
the polls. 

24 



RIPENING OF THE TRUST 

Roosevelt was a delegate in the conven- 
tion and his enthusiastic admirers besieged 
him with requests to permit the use of his 
name on the ticket. Not a few of his 
friends went so far as to insist that he 
should be at the head of it. 

Indeed, as the milling and mixing of del- 
egates proceeded, Hanna demanding and 
Piatt advising and conciliating, sentiment 
swung seriously to Roosevelt for first posi- 
tion. The movement gained such momen- 
tum that not only were the McKinley forces 
greatly disturbed, but, in the party's inter- 
est, the ColonePs more cautious friends 
found it necessary to detain him in his pri- 
vate room during the evening preceding the 
meeting of the convention, for whenever he 
showed himself the crowd seemed to loose 
its equilibrium. Of course it would have 
been a serious party mistake to have nomi- 
nated him in place of McKinley. 

Inadvertently, no doubt, Roosevelt had 
come to the great Republican meeting wear- 
ing a slouch hat. This was an innovation, 

25 



THE WRECK 

for New York always appears at the big 
party shows topped in shining silk beavers. 
Had the Colonel worn an old khaki nnif orm 
on this occasion there is no knowing what 
might have happened. There were those in 
Philadelphia willing to make oath that the 
Roosevelt chapean, carelessly tilted so as to 
shade his bronzed face, had seen service at 
San Juan Hill. 

It is difficult to measure the flood of 
volatile emotions that go to make up a rad- 
ical movement in politics, or to locate its 
source. No one doubts the fact, however, 
that the superimaginative citizen has never 
failed to find in Theodore Roosevelt all the 
elements to stir the crusader. In this in- 
stance even the Colonel's old hat served to 
arouse the mercurial multitude. 

Still, the feeling that the Republican 
cause, to insure success, needed to be 
strengthened at a point where weakness 
was already apparent was much deeper than 
even the astutest leaders of that day sup- 
posed it to be. 

26 



EIPENING OF THE TRUST 

True, the party's promises, as said by 
McKinley, had been carried out, and peace 
and plenty, or what passed for it, had re- 
turned to the land ; yet there were accumu- 
lating evidences of disquietude which boded 
no good for future solidarity. 

The rapid growth of monopoly in the 
leading lines of business, the certainty of its 
spread to all other lines, and its ultimate 
triumph over healthy competitive forces 
was the disturbing factor. 

The gentle McKinley, champion of the 
doctrine of protection, sincerely believed 
that complete happiness among the people 
would surely follow the permanent estab- 
lishment of this American fiscal policy, and 
that all else would be adjusted to harmonize 
with it. 

Having assisted in an advisory way in 
framing the anti-trust statute, he had the 
utmost confidence in its efficacy as a cor- 
rective. Being a just man, he believed in 
its enforcement. He could see no differ- 
ence between the big criminal and the little 

27 



THE WRECK 

one; they were equal under the law. Such 
was his abiding faith in the character of 
our institutions. 

Looking back to that period, it is im- 
possible to realize that in the face of solemn 
restraining statutes the thing now kno\^Ti as 
^^Big Business," — then the mere germ of 
monopoly, — would ever be permitted to 
reach its present proportions as a control- 
ling force in the affairs of the country. It 
was inconceivable that the mighty hand of 
the Government should fall as if paralyzed ; 
or worse, that it should be used to protect 
those who spurned the law. 

When McKinley came to the Presidency 
in 1897 all industry was at low tide. 
Armies of unemployed men had been 
tramping the highways demanding the op- 
portunity to work. It was no time for fine 
distinctions as to the meaning of the anti- 
trust law, then only in the seventh year of 
its uncertainty. The shops must be opened 
and the wheels of commerce set in motion. 

As a matter of fact there were no 

28 



RIPENING OF THE TRUST 

*^ trusts" in the sense that they now exist. 
There was no business to be monopolized. 
Faihires and receiverships were having 
their innings, and Democratic statesmen 
were explaining that these conditions had 
come about in consequence of the sudden 
change from artificial to natural laws. 

While political economists may never 
agree as to the fundamental cause, the 
Democratic theory was not without plausi- 
bility. Nor did it deter Republicans at the 
end of McKinley's first term from pointing 
with pride to the beneficent results of their 
policies. Business had revived to an un- 
precedented degree, and the hungry hordes 
did not stop to inquire into the ethics of it. 

Old mills were in operation again and 
new ones were being built. There was a 
demand for labor and an active market for 
commodities. This was the appearance of 
happiness that McKinley spoke of as he was 
leaving his home at Canton to attend the 
Buffalo exposition in September, 1901. 
The Democratic answer was that business 

29 



THE WRECK 

could not remain ahvays dormant, and that 
we should soon see the consequences of Re- 
publican artifice. 

As this is being written Congress is con- 
vening in extra session for the fifth time in 
nineteen years for the purpose of revising 
the tariff. Are we at last to have done with 
this troublesome question? We shall see. 
However, as the two old parties appear to 
be as wide apart as ever in the matter of 
policy, the prospect is not at all promising. 

It has been proposed, in order to avoid 
these frequent revisions, that a permanent 
tariff commission be created, and that this 
superconstitutional body shall change the 
rates of duty from time to time as condi- 
tions may require. The danger here is that 
the country might have a repetition of the 
experience it has had with the Bureau of 
Corporations, which was created to gather 
information in regard to the trusts and in 
a very short time became the protector of 
such trusts as were agreeable to it and its 
master. 

30 



EIPENING OF THE TRUST 

With the great revival of business, be- 
ginning with the first McKinley administra- 
tion, came also increased activity on the 
part of capital. As yet there had seemed 
to be no necessity for resorting to the Sher- 
man law to prevent industrial and other 
combinations. 

Although it was the product of a Repub- 
lican administration designed to prohibit 
monopoly by direct statute, the Philadel- 
phia convention of 1900 did not even refer 
to the anti-trust statute, but contented itself 
with declaring anew against ^^all conspira- 
cies and combinations intended to restrict 
business, to create monopolies, to limit pro- 
duction, or to control prices." It went 
further and favored ^^such legislation as will 
effectively restrain and prevent such abuses, 
and protect and promote competition," — 
as if the anti-trust law were not in exist- 
ence! 

In this respect the party was not entirely 
true to itself. How much better had the 
convention ^^ pointed with pride" here and 

31 



THE WRECK 

pledged itself to the enforcement of exist- 
ing law. Can it be that designing men were 
already enlisted in their work of nullifica- 
tion? The author of these pages has no 
doubt whatever that such was the case. 

As has been said, there was a feeling of 
unrest, of apprehension. The Steel trust, 
the monopoly in farm machinery, and many 
other combinations had not been organized. 
The era of ^^ moralized competition" re- 
cently referred to by a prominent attorney 
for the trusts, — in contradistinction to 
monopolized competition, no doubt, — ^had 
not yet arrived. 

The fact that it was near at hand, how- 
ever, impressed itself upon many of the 
delegates, who, though they had every con- 
fidence in McKinley's honesty and patriotic 
sturdiness, could see that the country was 
facing a problem of much greater import 
than the one with which the party had al- 
ready successfully dealt, — that is, the mere 
restoration of active business and the dis- 
persion of the Coxey army. 

32 



EIPENING OF THE TEUST 

In the interest of accuracy it must be said 
that they were impressed, too, with a feel- 
ing that, in view of his surroundings and 
his support by certain selfish interests, there 
was very grave doubt in regard to McKin- 
ley's ability to deal with this new problem; 
and it was believed that a stronger hand 
than his would be required to cope with the 
aggressive men who were now preparing to 
seize upon the country's reviving industries 
and convert them to personal and corporate 
ends. 

To those who really knew McKinley these 
apprehensions were groundless. There has 
never been any substantial doubt in regard 
to his purpose to have the law enforced, for 
he was a man of integrity, and held his oath 
of office to be the chart of his conduct. 

With these doubts in their minds and 
with the record and the professions of 
Colonel Roosevelt before them, to whom 
other than he could the delegates turn for 
safe leadership for the future? No great 
public problem has ever arisen that the man 

33 



THE WRECK 

did not appear, or seem to appear, to solve 
it. In this instance there could be no mis- 
take : Roosevelt was the man of the hour, — 
the one to carry the party banner through 
the close and doubtful states as an olfset 
to the equally intrepid, not to say impetuous, 
Bryan. 

Besides, it would put him in line as Mc- 
Kinley's successor, — the thing above all else 
that Hanna had feared until he was reas- 
sured by Piatt that Roosevelt was not dan- 
gerous. The feeling among the so-called 
radicals that they must have some one upon 
whom to lean and who stood firmly for what 
they believed in was very genuine. Not one 
of them could have given an entirely satis- 
factory reason at that time for his appre- 
hensions. They only knew that the condi- 
tions were ominous, that all signs presaged 
darker days for the Republic. 

With the exception of Senator Hanna 
and his immediate circle of conservatives no 
one had any doubt about Roosevelt's abso- 
lute sincerity. The people had been read- 

34 



I 



RIPEmNG OF THE TRUST 

ing his books and speeches, and had found 
them good, — replete with wholesome advice, 
bristling with patriotic thoughts, although 
some close observers declared that he was 
somewhat preachy. He was fresh from the 
field of battle, out of whose hardships love 
of country usually finds its inspiration. 
The newspapers were recounting many in- 
stances of his valor. He was young in 
body and vigorous of mind, and his strong 
Americanism and pronounced ideas in re- 
gard to ofiicial integrity and civic virtue 
sent a thrill to the hearts of the hopeful. 
It was expressions like these from his book 
^^The Strenuous Life" (1899) that drew 
men to him: 

"Our standard of public and private conduct will never be 
raised to the proper level until we make the scoundrel who 
succeeds feel the weight of a hostile public opinion even more 
strongly than the scoundrel who fails." 

These were strong words. To put them 
into force and effect required the deter- 
mined efforts of a strong man. No weak- 

35 



THE WRECK 

ling could do it. Roosevelt was not a weak- 
ling. What he appears to have had in his 
mind was hinted at in a speech delivered at 
Galena, April, 1900, shortly before the 
Philadelphia convention. The occasion was 
a Grant anniversary. Among other things 
he said : 

"The Republic cannot stand if honesty and decency do not 
prevail alike in public and private life; if we do not set our- 
selves seriously at work to solve the tremendous social prob- 
lems forced upon us by the far-reaching social changes of the 
last two generations." 

How could any man who spoke thus, 
being sincere, go wrong? Ten years later, 
in his address delivered at the Sorbonne in 
Paris, he said: 

"My position in regard to the moneyed interests can be put 
in a few words. In every civilized society property rights 
must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily, and in the great 
majority of cases, human rights and property rights are 
fundamentally and in the long run identical; but when it 
clearly appears that there is a real conflict between ttiem, hu- 
man rights must have the upper hand, for property belongs 
to man and not man to property." 

Sentiments as old as government itself, 
no less true when Thomas Paine uttered 

36 



I 



RIPENING OF THE TRUST 

tliem than they were in the more material 
age when the Steel and Harvester monopo- 
lies, with their inflated capitalization and 
political influence, were enjoying the pro- 
tection of the Roosevelt administration, 
contrary to the laws of the country. 

It is conceded that McKinley had lived 
up to the standard of public expectation; 
that he had been the successful leader of his 
time. The problem which destiny seemed 
to have created Theodore Roosevelt to solve 
was a new one, — new, at least, to the new 
century. 

True, monopoly as an institution was as 
old as civilization itself. Yet at no time in 
the past, not even in the middle ages, had it 
ever been recognized as a beneficent thing. 
England three hundred years before had 
not permitted it to reach a state of un- 
governableness, but had punished those 
who engaged in it by confiscating their 
property, by the imprisonment of offenders, 
and even by the cutting off of ears. Upon 
the forestallers of the market the severest 

37 



THE WRECK 

penalties had been inflicted and the culprits 
driven from the places of bargain and trade. 

In our own enlightened time, through the 
indifference or worse of an executive given 
to high-sounding and virtuous phrase, the 
monopolist was permitted to escape. Con- 
gress had provided the country with re- 
straining statutes, — a national challenge to 
individual and collective selfishness; a law 
with a soul, or at least with teeth and in- 
testines. 

Although a quarter of a century has gone 
by since it was framed, it has stood every 
test of judicial interpretation. If it has 
not been effectively enforced no blame at- 
taches to the la^^Tiiaking body, the object of 
Roosevelt's cuttlefish attacks. Congress 
early saw its duty and had the courage and 
the honesty to act. 

Lawyers, — those whose minds are not 
swayed by visions of large fees, — will ex- 
amine our statute books and fail to find a 
piece of legislation more perfect than the 
Sherman law. Its first three sections are 

38 



EIPENING OF THE TRUST 

peculiarly suggestive of the necessities of 
the occasion: 

Sec. 1. Every contract, combination in the form of trust 
or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or com- 
merce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is 
hereby declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make 
any such contract or engage in any such combination or con- 
spiracy, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on con- 
viction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five 
thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, 
or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court. 

Sec. 2. Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to 
monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person 
or persons to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce 
among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be 
deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof 
shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, 
or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said 
punishments, in the discretion of the court. 

Sec. 3. Every contract, combination in form of trust or 
otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce 
in any Territory of the United States or of the District of 
Columbia, or in restraint of trade or commerce between any 
such Territory and another, or between any such Territory 
or Territories and any State or States or the District of 
Columbia, or with foreign nations, or between the District of 
Columbia and any State or States or foreign nations, is hereby 
declared illegal. Every person who shall make any such eon- 
tract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy shall 
be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, 
shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, 

39 



THE WRECK 

or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said 
punishments, in the discretion of the court. 

Now and again some student of statecraft 
will ask why it was that the jail penalties 
were made so light. Mr. Sherman, who in- 
troduced the bill in the Senate, answered 
the question. He told an inquiring friend 
that this phase of the matter had given the 
framers of the law,— Senators Edmunds, 
Hoar, George, Ingalls, and himself,— much 
concern, and that they had finally agreed 
that one year's imprisonment would be a 
greater punishment to the man capable of 
organizing or conducting a monopoly than 
twenty years would be to the ordinary crim- 
inal; that the monopolist's real punishment 
would begin when he had been released 
from jail to mmgle again with his fellow- 
men. It was believed that the very thought 
of it would react as a deterrent to all such 
offenders. 

One who cares to pursue the subject as a 
psychological study may do well to search 
out some past offender, if any such can be 

40 



EIPENING OF THE TRUST 

found, and examine liis mind on the sub- 
ject. No doubt the result would make an 
illuminating chapter in politico-criminal 
literature. 

The explanation of Mr. Sherman is in- 
teresting in that it illustrates what was in 
the minds of the distinguished men who 
framed the important statute as well as the 
intent of the Congress that passed it. 

No one who knew the heart of William Mc- 
Kinley has any doubt about what he would 
have done had he lived. Although he was 
slow to act, he had a profoimd reverence for 
the laws of his country. It is known that 
he favored the criminal provisions of the 
anti-trust measure and appreciated the ne- 
cessity for them. 



41 



EOOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

THE American people have been pe- 
culiarly fortunate in choosing high- 
minded and level-headed men for the 
great office of President. Mistakes in this 
regard have been exceedingly rare, and, 
save in a single instance, these have been 
discovered and corrected before permanent 
harm had been accomplished. 

But it is not always the President who 
shapes the policy of the country. Too 
often it has been some shrewd cabinet min- 
ister or other trusted official who at the 
crucial moment gave the vital matter a sin- 
ister turn. 

Some one has said that if permitted to 
name the poet to write the nation's songs he 
would have little care concerning its politics. 
In a measure this sentiment might be ap- 
plied to certain administrations. 

42 



EOOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

There are great interests that do not 
trouble themselves about who is President 
or what his politics is, provided they may be 
assured beforehand in regard to the man 
who is to be Attorney-General. These 
same interests are also very exacting when 
it comes to the selection of a Secretary of 
the Treasury. The first executes the law, 
or is supposed to execute it, and the other 
handles the nation's money, or permits it to 
be handled. Hence the anxiety of Wall 
Street in regard to matters in Washington. 

McKinley's was a trustful nature. He 
was not disposed to be suspicious of men's 
motives, and as a rule accepted their word 
in complete confidence that it would be kept. 
IN'or did he distrust their judgment even 
when it did not entirely agree with his own. 

That he was often deceived would be no 
more than might be expected. The one 
great saving clause in his make-up, how- 
ever, was that he never acted hastily. He 
proceeded upon the theory that all men 
make mistakes; that none of us is in- 

43 



THE WRECK 

fallible. Thus, in the end, he would reach 
sound conclusions. 

Another admirable quality in McKinley 
was that he never lectured his coadjutors, 
belittled their capacity, nor reflected upon 
their integrity. He believed that men's 
errors would find them out and be corrected 
by the rule of self-reason. He was not a 
preacher, but rather an expounder of wise, 
well-considered economic doctrines by 
which the ship of state, as he gave it esti- 
mate, would gain safe harbor. 

Roosevelt came to the Presidency after 
McKinley 's second cabinet had been named. 
It was generally understood that he would 
carry out the policies of his unfortunate 
predecessor and of his party. The country 
was prosperous, as prosperity has been ac- 
cepted. The workingman's dinner-pail, 
now made of American tin-plate, was full to 
the bulging point. What more had he to 
ask? If its contents were costing a few 
cents more than formerly, was he not re- 
ceiving greater wages than had been paid 

44 



EOOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

liim for his labor four years back^ It was 
an unanswerable argument in favor of Re- 
publican doctrine, to which Eoosevelt was 
pledged. 

Hence it was pointed out that his task 
would be an easy one. He had but to sit 
tight where McKinley had sat and permit 
the people to go on thriving as before. No 
matter what McKinley himself would have 
done to check the combinations of capital, 
which was now girding its loins to larger 
efforts, if the new President would but stay 
the ^^ strong hand'' and permit ^^big busi- 
ness" to develop our wonderful resources as 
only big business could, we would astonish 
the world with our marvelous progress. 

It was a captivating plea in behalf of 
American enterprise and continued good 
times, and, by the instinctive application of 
persuasive methods so familiar to the cap- 
tains of industry, Eoosevelt had been im- 
pressed with it even before he took the oath 
of office at Buffalo. By the time he arrived 
in Washington to take his seat in the White 

45 



THE WRECK 

House he had assured Mr. Root of his com- 
plete acquiescence in the project; there 
would be no change in policy, no radical 
recommendations, nor other disturbing acts 
hostile to ^S^ested rights" — that is to say, not 
against those engaged in ^^ honest occupa- 
tions/' 

Whether Mr. Root remained in the cab- 
inet merely to see that the compact was 
kept is only incidental. It is a well under- 
stood fact, however, that he wielded a 
great influence over the new President. 
Throughout Roosevelt's seven and a half 
years in the White House Mr. Root was 
near him, — ^his closest adviser, indeed. 

This was not altogether pleasing to those 
who at Philadelphia had insisted upon the 
recognition of the hero of San Juan Hill. 
It was a matter of common knowledge that 
for years Mr. Root had been the legal ad- 
viser of large interests in New York; and 
while this was not held to be a disqualifica- 
tion, a bar to his occupying a high place in 
the Government, somehow the feeling so 

46 



EOOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

long prevalent in certain sections against 
the political dominance of Jersey corpora- 
tions operated to make Mr. Root's close re- 
lations to the President a dubious factor 
and to raise some doubt about the abso- 
lute certainty of a *^ square deal'' at the 
White House. 

These doubts were not allayed when, as 
time passed, the President not only found 
no fault with the Steel trust, then but re- 
cently organized, but actually received as 
welcome visitors the principal men who had 
put it together. The effect of these close 
relations was to embolden the promoters of 
monopoly and sadden the hearts of the 
Roosevelt adherents, who had persuaded 
themselves that if the anti-trust law was to 
be enforced their champion was the man to 
do it. They looked to him to put a few of the 
greater offenders in jail, but in vain. 

The murmurs of disappointment were not 
loud, but they were deep and significant. 
The monopolists and their sympathizers 
were pleased, of course ; but they restrained 

47 



THE WRECK 

their enthusiasm while they increased their 
activities. 

Here, then, was the beginning of the pre- 
arranged campaign for the overthrow of 
the potent clauses of the Sherman law, and 
it also marked the inevitable disintegration 
of the Republican party, which had put it 
on the statute books. The process was 
slow, as is always the case when momentous 
ethical revolutions take place, and yet it was 
most effective. 

The earlier manifestations of the party's 
dissolution showed themselves in the form 
of ^ insurgency'' so-called, particularly in 
the western states. It matters very little 
what name is given to a political movement ; 
it is the reason for it that counts. A re- 
markable thing about the insurgent agita- 
tion was that Roosevelt encouraged it. 
Notwithstanding the fact that at heart it 
was a protest against the aggressions of 
monopoly, for which he was largely respon-j 
sible, he managed to turn it to his own po-j 

48 



ROOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

litical account ; for it is not to be denied that 
the movement was accelerated by the organ- 
ization of the International Harvester 
company, which took place in 1902, under 
the very eye of the Roosevelt administra- 
tion. 

Attention was diverted from this event by 
the peculiar twist given about this time to 
various other matters entering into popu- 
lar discussion, and Roosevelt's nimbleness 
in centering his fire on Congress, which had 
already given the country an anti-trust 
remedy. 

For several years back there had been 
considerable criticism of the Government's 
public land policy. Charges had been 
made that the public domain was being ab- 
sorbed by well-organized syndicates; that 
coal and other valuable lands were passing 
to private and corporate ownership through 
the wrong use of statutes designed to ac- 
commodate individual settlers and populate 
the waste places. 

The concerted attacks that were made in 

49 



THE WRECK 

a few newspapers when other sensational 
material was short not only presupposed the 
existence of a great number of syndicates, 
large and small, alleged to be engaged in the 
illegitimate business, but implied the co- 
operation of the thousands of settlers who 
in reality were honestly seeking to make 
homes for themselves. 

These hardy people were scattered over 
a wide expanse of territory and being poor 
were not in a situation to defend themselves. 
This brought the senators and members rep- 
resenting public land states as yet unsettled 
to the rescue, and replies to the premed- 
itated onslaughts were made in Congress. 
The defense offered immediately met with 
the answer that the defenders themselves 
were engaged, along with the others, in 
^'looting the people's heritage.'' Thus was 
the public mind diverted from the real issue. 

In time the agitation gave rise to an at- 
tractive campaign in behalf of ^^the conser- 
vation of the natural resources," and it was 
surprising how many there were who had 

50 



EOOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

never seen an acre of Government land who 
joined in this newest crusade. 

Yet it seems never to have occurred to the 
general public that the leaders of the prop- 
aganda, not a few of them, might be en- 
gaged in attempting to accomplish in their 
own selfish interests the very things they 
were roundly denouncing. 

It soon developed, however, that the ^ * con- 
servationists " had their special publica- 
tions, notably a periodical known as The 
Talisman; that, besides having the sym- 
pathetic assistance of the President, they 
had a thoroughly organized press agency in 
Washington, including publicity bureaus, at 
the head of which were civil service em- 
ployees whose names were on the Govern- 
ment pay-roll. These men devoted their 
entire time to writing, lecturing and agita- 
ting in the interest of the repeal of the 
homestead law. 

It also fell out that the editor of The Tal- 
isman was in the employ of the land grant 
railroads at a salary of $45,000 a year, made 

51 



THE WRECK 

up by equal contributions from the several 
railway companies having lands for sale. 

Thus it came to dawn upon the minds of 
those who cared to analyze the situation 
with fairness that if the land laws should be 
repealed the tide of settlers would neces- 
sarily be turned to the lands held in private 
ownership. This was the milk in the re- 
form cocoanut. 

The President's alert sympathies being 
now enlisted on the side of ^^conservation," 
he seized upon the opportunity to belabor 
Congress for its ' ' negligence. ' ' He directed 
his attacks upon those senators and mem- 
bers who stood for the interests of their 
struggling constituents, — the homestead 
settlers, — and opposed the schemes of the 
private landowners. 

It was through the methods herein de- 
scribed that ^' conservation" became one of 
the Roosevelt policies, that the ''big stick" 
materialized as a personal weapon, and that 
the term ''reactionary" came into use. 

It is true that the land laws were being 

52 



ROOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

misused by a small number of settlers and 
others, but where one settler was found who 
did not comply strictly with the statute 
there were thousands who were trying to 
make actual homes for themselves. 

But little is known outside of the west- 
ern section of the privations endured by the 
brave men and women who have cast their 
lot upon the wild lands of the Government. 
Ninety-nine per cent, of them were with- 
out means. Many of them came from the 
overcrowded cities and knew little of the 
trials of home building. At best under 
these circumstances their condition was 
pitiable enough, and they earned any re- 
ward that came to them. 

In addition to the unavoidable hardships 
with which they were beset they were har- 
assed by special agents, — Government spies, 
— who seldom neglected to increase the bur- 
dens of the pioneers by making sensational 
reports to the department, depicting the 
^^ perfect reign of dishonesty and fraud'' 
that was going on. 

53 



THE WRECK 

These reports contributed immensely to 
the cleverness of the special agents and were 
heralded broadcast in justification of the 
campaign on the part of the private land 
syndicate. By this aggregation of ^'re- 
formers" the homestead settler was branded 
as a thief and perjurer, and the men who 
took up his cause were grossly maligned by 
those pluming themselves as leaders of a 
crusade of righteousness. 

Besides contributing to the financial bene- 
fit of those who instigated the wicked work 
and to the glory of the zealots who assisted 
them, the agitation served the deeper pur- 
pose of diverting the public mind from the 
remissness of officials in other directions. 

It was during this period that business 
combination on a large scale got its perma- 
nent footing, — its strangle hold upon the 
country's industries. From 1901 to 1909 
regnant monopoly passed from infancy to 
gianthood practically unmolested. 

The civil actions instituted against the 
trusts by the Department of Justice were 

54 



r 



EOOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

paraded as evidence that the administration 
was alert in enforcing the law. Thus the 
public was entertained and comforted, but 
the trust itself was not restrained. 

It could well afford to pay the insignificant 
fines imposed and pass on to greater achieve- 
ments and permanency. Yet the records of 
the department do not disclose a single in- 
stance wherein any individual of note en- 
gaged in breaking the laws of his country 
\\^s sent to jail. The punishment of lesser 
offenders against the long list of criminal 
statutes went on unabated, while the ^'big 
fish'' went free. 

These facts of history, used in a desultory 
way in the heat of campaigns gone by, de- 
serve to be recorded in the light of some im- 
portant results that followed. They are 
entitled to consideration here because of 
their ominous consequences to future gen- 
erations, to say nothing of the burdens im- 
posed upon this one. 

How many of our statesmen have paused 
long enough to examine into the country's 

55 



THE WRECK 

trust policy under Roosevelt *? And how 
few there are in these strenuous times who 
are reasoning it out for themselves. 

There was a certain fascination in the 
Roosevelt messsages. They could be relied 
upon in advance to stir the superficial mind 
to a frenzy of resentment against prevailing 
ills, but more particularly against ills that 
were purely hypothetical. 

Long ago it came to be an American habit 
to applaud the man who has the faculty 
artfully to stigmatize his fellows; it is 
something worth while to see the victim 
squirm, be he ever so innocent a target. 
Roosevelt possesses this peculiar knack as 
few others have it, and during the last half 
of his administration he exercised it freely, 
centering his fire chiefly upon the Congress. 

Now, the American Congress has never 
been a perfect model of uprightness. Be- 
ing human, it has done some things which 
it ought not to have done and neglected 
others which might have been accomplished 
for the general good. On the whole, how- 

56 



ROOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

ever, it has performed its important duties 
creditably and for the most part in the pub- 
lic interest. 

One of its weak points, — its very weakest 
perhaps, — is its disinclination to offend the 
administrative branch of the Government. 
While it may di:ffer from the President or 
members of his cabinet in some things, to 
outward appearances it invariably accords 
to these officials the consideration that is 
their due. 

\ To have the confidence of the President 
is to be regarded with favor by the people ; 
to be at war with him is to invite censure 
at home. Senators and members will en- 
dure a great deal before breaking with the 
chief executive, or even disagreeing with 
him, save in matters wherein the minority 
never agrees with the majority, and vice 
versa. 

In the light of all this the ordinary civili- 
ties of life would seem to demand that the 
President himself shall show that he is not 
lacking in those qualities that belong to the 

57 



THE WEECK 

recognized courtesies of official life. That 
lie may stand before the country as the very 
archetype of good manners, thus maintain- 
ing the dignity of his station, he should cul- 
tivate urbanity. 

This quality was inherent in Washington, 
in Lincoln, and in McKinley. It was lack- 
ing in Eoosevelt. His attitude toward 
Congress was not unlike his attitude toward 
a fresh squad of very coarse policemen 
when he was commissioner in New York. 
One would suppose that with his superior 
ability and having enjoyed exceptional edu- 
cational advantages, he would have discov- 
ered, in the natural order of things, that 
there is a wide difference between the point 
of view and the importance of a constable 
and that of the men whom the people choose 
to make their laws in Congress. 

Roosevelt did not distinguish between the 
two grades of men. President Eoosevelt 
did not rise above Police Commissioner 
Eoosevelt. It is not surprising therefore 
that he forgot some things that are due to 

58 



ROOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

the great office of President of the United 
States. Not that it is out of place for the 
President to lecture Congress as a body if 
occasion require it, but it must be done in 
a way not to cast reproach upon it. 

It should be assumed that Congress is 
composed of men of the highest motives. 
Should it turn out that this is not the case 
the people themselves will make the discov- 
ery. It is not for the President because he 
is^sometimes spoken of as being at the head 
01^ the nation, — Avhich is not strictly a fact, 
—to belittle his fellow officials, whose re- 
sponsibilities, in their sphere, are quite as 
great as his. 

To judge of the American Congress by 
the Roosevelt estimate, as outlined in some 
of his public utterances, but more especially 
in his contemptuous general disregard of it, 
one might be inclined to look upon it as a 
body of very inferior persons banded to- 
gether for plunder. This is the hurtful im- 
pression created by Roosevelt's attitude to- 
ward it. 

59 



THE WRECK 

Yet it was this branch of the Govern- 
ment that gave the country that legislative 
masterpiece known as the Sherman anti- 
trust law, which Roosevelt took a solemn 
oath to enforce. It was his insolent disre- 
gard for the vital provisions of this statute, 
which the ''good trusts" were permitted to 
override, that changed our republican 
institutions to an oligarchy of legalized 
monopoly. 

Indisputable proof of this statement is 
found in a remarkable letter written in 1907 
by the Roosevelt Commissioner of Corpora- 
tions, Herbert Knox Smith, an official who, 
upon his retirement to private life, allied 
himself with the bolting Roosevelt politi- 
cians, now under the financial care of George 
W. Perkins, organizer of trusts. 

A more flagrant betrayal of the people 
than the one revealed in this confidential 
letter cannot be found in all the annals of 
our time, and we are left to wonder which 
of the many very able lawyers on the re- 
tained list of the powerful Morgan inter- 

60 



ROOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

ests was the author of the frank and care- 
fully prepared document. 

A recital of the details whereby it came to 
light makes an interesting chapter in itself 
and fixes beyond all peradventure the part 
that Roosevelt played in the great conspir- 
acy. Liberal excerpts from the letter will 
suffice. It should be explained, however, 
that the letter, although written in the fall 
of J-907, was not made public until three 
years later. 

^ And had it not been for the positive state- 
ment of Colonel Roosevelt that he had not 
ordered the suspension of legal proceedings 
against the Harvester monopoly, when the 
contrary was known by a very few to be 
true, the letter would still be a part of the 
secret archives of the Department of Com- 
merce and Labor, where it is claimed to 
have originated. At any rate, it was signed 
by Commissioner Smith. 

It furnishes a startling revelation of the 
close relations which had long existed be- 
tween the then President and the arch or- 

61 



THE WRECK 

ganizer of trusts, Mr. Perkins. It also 
reveals the real attitude of Roosevelt in the 
matter of law enforcement; and it shows 
how lightly his oath of office sat upon his 
conscience and how he used his high place 
to shield his personal and political friends. 
The letter begins : 

"On August 27, 1907, by direction of the President, I met 
Mr. George W. Perkins, chairman of the finance committee of 
the International Harvester Company, and discussed the mat- 
ter with him. August 26 I saw the President and stated 
briefly my views, and upon his instructions I then, on the 
next day, saw the Attorney General at Lenox, Mass." 

Although the case had been prepared 
ready to file with the court months before, 
Attorney General Bonaparte told Mr. 
Smith that he was not ready to take it up. 
Mr. Smith then goes on to say that he did 
not discuss the matter further with Mr. 
Bonaparte, ^^ knowing that the President 
had instructed the Attorney General to take 
no further action in this matter" until ^^a 
final conference could be held. ' ' 

There is no record of any such ^^ final con- 

62 



ROOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

ference." Yet there is no doubt that sev- 
eral were held, for Mr. Perkins continued to 
be a visitor at the White House, the Bureau 
of Corporations, and the Department of 
Justice. 

That the Harvester monopolists were in 
full accord with the policy of the adminis- 
tration and were trying to forget their 
original offense, — the creation of a combina- 
tiojQr in restraint of trade, — appears further 
along in the letter : 

"Briefly, the International Harvester Company, through 
Mr. Perkins, takes the position that it has, ever since the 
creation of the Bureau of Corporations, endeavored to put 
itself in line with the policy of publicity maintained by the 
Administration: that, so far as it is aware, it has committed 
no violation of any statute; that it has continued to offer 
to the bureau from time to time complete access to all its 
books and papers and to irive all the information desired as 
to its operation; that it has, indeed, frequently ur^ed such 
investigation by the bureau; that it can obtain no direct 
information at all as to the nature of the charges against it, 
but that it has reason to believe that tlie case against it is 
purely a technical, legal one under the Sherman law, involving 
merely an interesting legal question as to whether the or- 
ganization of the company per se constitutes a combination 
in restraint of trade, and that no moral sin or methods of 
unfair competition are included in said case." 

63 



THE WRECK 

But for the serious consequences to man- 
kind involved in the rise and the progress 
of monopoly in the United States under 
Roosevelt the letter of his commissioner and 
the view taken by the ^'harvesters" would 
be almost humorous. It recalls an incident 
in the early history of a western state. A 
prominent citizen had stolen a horse and was 
in an adjoining state trying to dispose of it. 
Failing in this, he agreed to do some plow- 
ing for a farmer. After a time, under the 
mollifying influence of his earnings, no 
doubt, he wrote home to his son to see the 
sheriif and tell him that as the animal was 
being put to good use in advancing the in- 
terests of agriculture no ''moral sin" had 
been committed. 

The Smith letter continues: 

"To the extent of my present knowledge, I am satisfied 
that the facts are as stated by the said company, with the 
single exception that I do not have definite knowledge as 
to the nature of the case now in the hands of tlie Department 
of Justice, but, from expressions of the Attorney General, I 
am inclined to believe that it is, as Mr. Perkins stated, a 

64 



I 



ROOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

purely technical, legal question. As to the principle of fair 
dealing and good policy involved, I also concur emphatically 
with the attitude of the company. It is certainly true that 
this company has been most open with the bureau." 

Mr. Smith's emphatic concurrence ^^with 
the attitude of the company" appears to 
have met with the concurrence of the Presi- 
dent, who permitted Mr. Perkins, through 
Mr. Smith, to use a Senate resohition to 
smother action on the part of the Depart- 
ment of Justice, which decided to withhold 
its suit so long as the Department of Com- 
merce and Labor was engaged in making an 
investigation. With this Smith ceased to 
investigate! The Senate resolution was 
held in his office nearly seven years from the 
date of its passage, — another illustration of 
''how not to do it.'' The intimate relations 
of the ''good trusts" with Mr. Smith's 
bureau are thus set forth: 

"Furthermore, the attitude of the Morgan interests gener- 
ally, which controlled this company, has been one of 
active cooperation. In the investigation of the steel in- 
dustry the United States Steel Corporation has already spent 
thousands of dollars in compiling for the bureau the most 

65 



THE WEECK 

complete and intimate information as to the business, and 
its officers have gone to immense trouble and loss of time to 
facilitate in every way our work." 

At this point the letter reveals the fact 
that Mr. Perkins saw and talked with Mr. 
Smith August 24, two days before Smith 
sent his letter to the President. In that in- 
terview Mr. Perkins said: 

"That the interests he represented, including not only the 
International Harvester Company, but also the far-reaching 
Morgan interests generally, had originally favored the crea- 
tion of the Bureau of Corporations and the policy of the 
President which that bureau represents. He concluded, with 
great emphasis, with the remark that if after all the en- 
deavors of this company and the other Morgan interests to 
uphold the policy of the Administration and to adopt their 
method of modern publicity, this company was now to be at- 
tacked in a purely technical case, the interests he represented 
were going to fight. So far as I have knowledge of the facts 
set forth by Mr. Perkins," Mr. Smith wrote, "I believe them 
to be true. I liave no knowledge of any moral ground for 
attack on the company." 

But the hero of San Juan Hill seems not 
to have been in a fighting mood just then. 
He swallowed Mr. Perkins' threat and per- 
mitted him to have his own way in the mat- 
ter. 

66 



.1 



ROOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

And now we have an exhibition of the 
ease with which a bureau official, in further- 
ance of a President's policy, overturns an 
act of Congress : 

"I believe that industrial combination is an economic 
necessity; that the Sherman law, as interpreted by the 
Supreme Court, is an economic absurdity and is impossible 
of general enforcement and, even if partially enforced, will, 
in most cases, work only evil. I believe the principle it repre- 
sents must ultimately be abandoned; that combination must 
be allowed and then regulated." 

^Every monopolist in the country will 
agree with Mr. Smith that the Sherman law 
is ^^an economic absurdity" and that ^^com- 
bination must be allowed and then regu- 
lated. '^ In the light of their experience un- 
der Roosevelt what would they have to fear 
from '^regulation''? The truth is that 
George W. Perkins, known as the political 
scout of Wall Street, originated the policy 
of '^ regulation." At least a year before it 
was finally adopted by the Roosevelt ad- 
ministration Mr. Perkins was very busy 
advocating it in lectures and speeches. 



67 



THE WEECK 

There is a refreshing naivete in Mr. 
Smith's estimate of the value to the admin- 
istration of the Morgan influence. Under 
this head he says : 

"If now, by such a retrogression, through the crude theories 
represented by the Sherman law, these interests are shown 
that prohibition, and not regulation, of combinations is to 
be carried out, they will feel that there is nothing left for 
them but to fight, and their great influence will be thrown 
against not only this but any other attempt at corporate 
reform. 

"In the specific instance involved, this matter is demon- 
strated. The mere refusal of the Steel Corporation to 
give information except at the end of a lawsuit would 
practically cripple the steel inquiry of the bureau. Un- 
questionably such refusal would be the first step in the 
fight. 

"While the Administration has never hesitated to grapple 
with any of the financial interests, no matter how great, 
when it is believed that a substantial wrong is being 
committed, it is a very practical question whether it is well 
to throw away now the great influence of the so-called 
Morgan interests, which up to this time have supported the 
advanced policy of the Administration, both in the general 
principles and in the application thereof to their specific 
interests, and place them generally in opposition." 

There is an air of frankness in this sug- 
gested partnership between the Morgan 
monopolies and the administration that al- 

68 



I 



EOOSEVELT IN THE SADDLE 

most takes the breath away. And Smith 
was not even rebuked for making it. 

In closing his letter Roosevelt's super- 
serviceable commissioner points out the 
danger to the Morgan interests should com- 
petition be restored : 

"I believe that Mr. Perkins' statement that his interests 
would necessarily be driven into active competition was a 
sincere one, and in fact I can hardly see how these great 
interests can take any other attitude should this prosecution 
be started and the final adoption of this policy be made 
ptAlic." 

What becomes of the persistent avowals 
of the Republican party in favor of compe- 
tition, the life of trade, after this profound 
declaration of Mr. Smith that Mr. Perkins, 
representing ^^the great influence of the so- 
called Morgan interests, ' ' was opposed to it ^ 
Is it to be wondered at that they now have 
a party of their own and that Roosevelt is 
its prophet ? 



69 



MONOPOLY'S RAPID PACE 

A CAREFUL examination, of Roose- 
velt's messages to Congress from 
1901 to 1909 shows a greatly modi- 
fied spirit on his part toward ^^the scoundrel 
who succeeds," as expressed in his book 
^^The Strenuous Life" in 1899, and in his 
Grant speech in 1900, wherein he said: 
^^The Republic cannot stand if honesty and 
decency do not prevail alil^e in public and 
private life." 

Whom had he in mind and to whom did 
the public believe he referred when he spoke 
of '^the scoundrel who succeeds"? Was it 
not the men who were at that moment mak- 
ing ready to combine the competing steel 
plants of the country, with actual assets of 
less than $700,000,000 into a single corpora- 
tion with a capital of $1,400,000,000 ?— the 
men who paid Andrew Carnegie $200,000,- 

70 



MONOPOLY'S RAPID PACE 

000 more than his property was worth in or- 
der to get rid of a rival concern ? 

On the same page of the newspapers that 
reported Roosevelt's stirring speeches in 
1901 may be read an account of the or- 
ganization of the Steel trust, with its enor- 
mously inflated capitalization upon which 
the people were helplessly bound to pay and 
are paying a perpetual tax. 

Before very long a promising competitor 
of this monster combination grew up in the 
far south. It was known as the Tennessee 
Coal and Iron Company, with a capital of 
$30,000,000. It soon came to be a thorn in 
the flesh of the big Morgan monopoly. 

What happened in the case of the Tennes- 
see concern is quite fully described in a 
speech delivered by Senator James A. Reed, 
of Missouri, in August, 1912. He said: 

"It possessed such natural advantages that its independent 
continuance menaced the monopoly prices of the Morgan- 
Perkins trust. Wlien the panic of 1907 came on the great 
money power tlireatened to close down upon it. Controlling 
the money power was Morgan and Perkins. 

"Representatives of Morgan and Perkins came to Wash- 

71 



THE WRECK 

ington, laid the entire transaction before the President, Mr. 
Roosevelt, and secured from him a promise of immunity from 
punishment. He sanctioned the destruction of the last 
great rival of Morgan's and Perkins's Steel trust. 

"If it was worth more than $200,000,000 to remove the 
rivalry of the Carnegie plants, it certainly was worth much 
more to destroy the rivalry, and at the same time acquire 
the properties of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company. Is 
it any wonder that Perkins still remains faithful ? 

"I call attention to the second incident: In April of this 
year there was printed in a Senate document the cor- 
respondence which showed that when the Attorney General, 
in the year 1907, was about to prosecute the Harvester trust 
Perkins insolently demanded that Roosevelt stop the prosecu- 
tions. His orders were truculently obeyed. 

"This is what Perkins told the President's representative, 
Herbert Knox Smith, all of which Smith wrote to the Presi- 
dent: 'Mr. Perkins concluded with great emphasis with the 
remark that if after all the endeavors of his company and the 
other Morgan interests to uphold the policies of the ad- 
ministration and to adopt their methods of modern publicity 
this company was now to be attacked in a purely technical 
case, the interests which he represented were going to fight.' 

"This impudent and unparalleled message was communi- 
cated to the President by Mr. Smith, and in whining, dis- 
graceful obedience to it Roosevelt ordered the discontinuance 
of the prosecution. It was not a case of the clay saying to 
the potter, 'Why hast thou made me thus?' but of the potter 
saying to the clay, 'I made you and you must serve me.' " 

As has been said, the Roosevelt attitude 
toward ^^the scoundrel who succeeds" was 



72 



MONOPOLY'S RAPID PACE 

now greatly modified. In his message to 
Congress in December, 1901, he discussed 
the trust question at length. He lost no 
time in pointing out that the Government 
had made a serious mistake in adopting the 
Sherman law as a remedy against monopoly. 
Among other things he said : 

"Much of the legislation directed at the trusts would have 
been exceedingly mischievous had it not also been entirely 
ineffective. In accordance with a well-knoAvn sociological law, 
the ignorant or reckless agitator has been the really effective 
^friend of the evils which he has been nominally opposing. In 
dealing with business interests, for the Government to under- 
take by crude and ill-considered legislation to do what may 
turn out to be bad, would be to incur the risk of such far- 
reaching disaster that it would be preferable to undertake 
nothing at all. The men who demand the impossible or the 
undesirable serve as the allies of the forces with which they 
are nominally at war, for they hamper those who would 
endeavor to find out in rational fashion what the wrongs 
really are and to what extent and in what manner it is 
practicable to apply remedies." 

A mild rebuke, it will be observed, to those 
eminent statesmen, — Edmunds, Hoar, 
George, Sherman, and others, — who had 
given the subject the study of a lifetime. 
However, Roosevelt had been in office all of 

73 



THE WRECK 

two months, and in ^^ rational fashion" had 
arrived at a solution of the problem. Yet he 
was shrewd enough not to overlook the fact 
that there were ^^real and grave evils," for 
he went on to say : 

"All this is true; and yet it is also true that there are 
real and grave evils, one of the chief being over-capitalization 
because of its many baleful consequences; and a resolute and 
practical effort must be made to correct these evils. 

"There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the 
American people that the great corporations known as trusts 
are in certain of their features and tendencies hurtful to the 
general welfare. This springs from no spirit of envy or un- 
charitableness, nor lack of pride in the great industrial 
achievements that have placed this country at the head of 
the nations struggling for commercial supremacy." 

As time passed he evolved his scheme of 
^^ regulation and supervision," which the 
Smith letter subsequently described to be 
^'the policy of the administration," vigor- 
ously indorsed by the Morgan interests. 

However, before reaching a definite con- 
clusion in regard to ^^my policy" Roosevelt 
indulged in a hasty examination of the Fed- 
eral Constitution, and in doing so he made a 
w^onderful discovery. It was this: 

74 



MONOPOLY'S RAPID PACE 

"The power of the Congress to regulate interstate com- 
merce is an absolute and unqualified grant, and without 
limitations other than those prescribed by the Constitution. 
The Congress has constitutional authority to make all laws 
necessary and proper for executing this power, and I am 
satisfied that this power has not been exhausted by any 
legislation now on the statute books. It is evident, there- 
fore, that evils restrictive of commercial freedom and en- 
tailing restraint upon national commerce fall within the 
regulative power of the Congress, and that a wise and reason- 
able law would be a necessary and proper exercise of Con- 
gressional authority to the end that such evils should be 
eradicated." 

Until now it had been supposed that the 
framers of the Sherman law, being some- 
what familiar with our great organic act, 
had followed it quite closely in the work 
that they had done. In their opinion they 
had succeeded in exhausting all the constitu- 
tional power to be found, and all that was 
necessary now was for the President to en- 
force the statute that they had written, be- 
ginning with its first three sections. It 
must have been a great surprise to them to 
be told by this novice in statecraft that they 
had not known exactly what they were do- 
ing. As Senator Edmunds is said to have 

75 



THE WRECK 

remarked to a friend: ^^What meat doth 
this our Caesar feed upon that he hath 
grown so great*?'' 

Roosevelt continued to urge his policy of 
regulation and supervision, and the Morgan 
interests continued to commend Roosevelt 
and back him up. He asked Congress to 
make provision for a Department of Com- 
merce and Labor. It did so, and in 1903 the 
new department was organized. His con- 
ception of the duties of the department are 
set forth in his message of December of that 
year : 

"It is not designed to restrict or control the fullest liberty 
of legitimate business action, but to secure exact and 
authentic information which will aid the Executive in en- 
foi-cing existing laws, and which will enable the Congress to 
enact additional legislation, if any should be found necessary, 
in order to prevent the few from obtaining privileges at the 
expense of diminished opportunities for the many." 

Referring to the Bureau of Corporations 
he said that its purpose v/as ^^not to embar- 
rass or assail legitimate business." No 
longer, therefore, was the Sherman law to 
apply to all corporations organized in re- 

76 



MONOPOLY'S EAPID PACE 

straint of trade, but only to such corpora- 
tions as the President might decide upon as 
being ^illegitimate.'' Thus did the will of 
Mr. Roosevelt come to be the law. It was a 
great deal more than the ^^ transient dicta- 
torship" spoken of by Guizot: it was an 
absolute dictatorship, such as all men of 
Roosevelt's stamp have ever longed to es- 
tablish. 

In his message of December, 1904, he 
felicitated himself and Congress, but more 
particularly himself, upon the fact that the 
Bureau of Corporations had made ^^ex- 
haustive examinations into the legal condi- 
tion under which corporate business is 
carried on in the several states, into all 
judicial decisions on the subject," and as- 
sured Congress that he would allow it to 
have such information from the Bureau as 
might seem to him to be expedient. In 
other words, as is also made quite clear in 
the Perkins-Smith letter, the Commissioner 
of Corporations, under the direction of the 
President, had superseded both Congress 

77 



THE WRECK 

and the law department of the Govern- 
ment. 

In a subsequent message, after belittling 
the importance of the police power reserved 
to the several states of the Union, he in- 
dulges in several pages of platitude on the 
relations that should exist between capital 
and labor, and, with unusual indefiniteness, 
reminds the people that they *^owe it to 
themselves to remember that the most dam- 
aging blow that can be given popular gov- 
ernment is to elect an unworthy and sinister 
agitator on a platform of violence and 
hypocrisy." Here we have an exhibition of 
the instincts and practices of the inkfish that 
may go a great way toward illuminating 
what some one has termed ^^a confusion 
worse confounded." The distinction is also 
made between a worthy and an unworthy 
agitator ! 

A year later, while serving his first elect- 
ive term, the triteness and the hackneyed 
phrasing in his annual message are depress^ 
ing. He calls upon Congress to ^^give to the 

78 



MONOPOLY'S RAPID PACE 

sovereign some effective power of supervi- 
sion over their corporate use, ' ' — referring to 
the fortunes amassed through corporate or- 
ganization. Surely he could not have been 
dissatisfied with the size of the contributions 
collected by Mr. Cortelyou, his campaign 
manager, in 1904. He goes on : 

"In order to insure a healthy social and industrial life, 
every big corporation should be held responsible by, and be 
accountable to, some sovereign strong enough to control its 
conduct. I am in no sense hostile to corporations. This is 
an age of combination, and any effort to prevent all combina- 
tion will be not only useless, but in the end vicious, because 
'of the contempt for law which the failure to enforce law 
inevitably produces. We should, moreover, recognize in cor- 
dial and ample fashion the immense good effected by corporate 
agencies in a country such as ours, and the wealth of intellect, 
energy, and fidelity devoted to their service, and therefore 
normally to the service of the public, by their officers and 
directors." 

This amounts almost to a confession of 
failure. Had he not assumed sovereign 
powers ^ and had not the Congress given him 
a Bureau through which to exercise those 
powers ? He had a free hand. No one was 
restraining him; he was the Government, 
the sovereign. 

79 



THE WRECK 



a 



I am in no sense hostile to corporations," 
he says. But what did he mean by ^^the 
contempt for law which the failure to en- 
force law inevitably produces"? Had he 
himself enforced the essential provisions of 
the Sherman law against ' ' every big corpor- 
ation'"? Yet ^^we should, moreover, recog- 
nize . . . the fidelity devoted to their serv- 
ice [the corporations], and therefore 
normally to the service of the public, by 
their officers and directors." 

What a mystifying web of assertion and 
contradiction ! 

In his last annual message, or lecture 
rather (December, 1908), he continues the 
stale platitudes that abound in all his state 
papers. 

"We no more believe in that empiricism which demands 
absolutely unrestrained individualism than we do in that 
empiricism which clamors for a deadening socialism which 
would destroy all individual initiative and would ruin the 
country with a completeness that not even an unrestrained 
individualism itself could achieve." 

The destruction of ^^ individual initiative" 
had already been accomplished, its fate 

80 



MONOPOLY'S RAPID PACE 

sealed, by Ms own outlawry, by Ms contempt 
for existing statutes and Ms setting up of 
a personal government. 

"The danger to American democracy lies not in the least 
in the concentration of administrative power in responsible 
and accountable hands. It lies in having the power in- 
sufficiently concentrated, so that no one can be held responsible 
to the people for its use. Concentrated power is palpable, 
visible, responsible, easily reached, quickly held to account." 

High-sounding phrase, no doubt, to the 
ear of the superficial, but, when measured by 
'Roosevelt's performances, the merest flub- 
dub. And the pity of it is that Roosevelt 
has indulged in so much of this kind of thing 
that he himself thinks that he is a sincere 
reformer. Again: ^ 

"Power scattered through many administrators, many 
legislators, many men who work behind and through legislators 
and administrators, is impalpable, is unseen, is irresponsible, 
cannot be reached, cannot be held to account." 

Whom did he suspect? Was it Smith, 
his commissioner? Perhaps it was he, for 
no one among all the administrators was as 



81 



THE WRECK 

close to Morgan and Perkins as Smith was. 
It could not have been Perkins; it was un- | 
necessary for Perkins to work behind a gov- $ 
ernment subordinate when he could go di- 
rectly to the White House — did go there — 
and get what he wanted. Ah, with Roose- 
velt always it has ever been some one else 
who was to blame, — some indefinite power 
of evil portent that was preventing him, 
holding him back! Yet again: 

"Democracy is in peril wherever the administration of 
political power is scattered among a variety of men who 
work in secret, wliose very names are unknown to the com- 
mon people. It is not in peril from any man who derives 
authority from the people, who exercises it in sight of the 
people, and who is from time to time compelled to give an 
account of its exercise to the people." 

An open worker was Roosevelt ! Ameri- 
can public life has not furnished another 
such. Before him it had never produced a 
man of his type who succeeded as long as he 
has succeeded in making the people believe 
that he could do no intentional wrong. 

Wherein, then, is the secret of his success 

82 



MONOPOLY'S RAPID PACE 

in this regard'? It is in his peculiar hyp- 
notic ability, in his talent for dissimulation, 
— the art of concealment, — which is less 
reprehensible perhaps than arrant hypoc- 
risy. 

It must be that in his youth, being a stu- 
dent of ethics, he readily absorbed the 
teachings of the early philosophers and re- 
solved highly to follow them. This was 
creditable enough, to be sure. But when in 
his later life he came in contact with human 
affairs and had to deal with realities his im- 
pulsive nature clashed with the precepts of 
his former tutors. Deviation, ever the child 
of impulse, asserted sway over his singular 
mind and made him the creature of that ne- 
cessity which moves the average politician. 

Underlying these conflicting emotions was 
a well-developed ego, inherited or acquired 
— it is no matter. Fortified by his book les- 
sons on civic virtue, read and reread until 
they had imprinted themselves indelibly up- 
on the films of his receptive memory, he pro- 
claimed them habitually as a rule of action 

83 



THE WEECK 

for others, believing that he too was follow- 
ing them. 

Now the net result is that we have in the 
Smith letter and in the messages themselves 
an interesting exposition of the Roosevelt 
duality, and of his policy of ^^ regulation and 
supervision," which had been unconsciously 
substituted by him for the policy of law 
embodied in the anti-trust act of 1890. 

In other words, the law of Congress was 
set aside by Roosevelt for a law of his own, 
which conformed more nearly to his erratic 
conception of public requirements. What 
did it matter if the gigantic Morgan combi- 
nations, — the trusts with which Roosevelt 
was particularly familiar and with the pro- 
moters of which he was on friendly terms, — 
what if they escaped the operation of the 
Sherman law's salient features, provided 
they appeared to obey the Roosevelt ^4aw''? 

Out of his studies of the theories of the 
early philosophers and his unsteady efforts 
to apply hastily those theories to the practi- 
cal things of modern times he erected a 

84 



MONOPOLY'S RAPID PACE 

shaky standard of action peculiarly his own. 
To this reed-like structure he sought to 
anchor our Republican Government. Is it 
to be wondered at that the ship of state 
drifted upon the shoals? 



85 



THE MOEAL EFFECT 

THE inevitable result of tlie protection 
which the Morgan monopolies re- 
ceived at Roosevelt's official hands 
was the unlawful organization of other busi- 
ness combinations and the further demorali- 
zation of competitive activities. The 
methods of ^^big business '^ have been 
adopted in many lines, even by the farmers 
of the country. 

Prior to the organization of the monopoly 
which now controls every line of farm ma- 
chinery the local price of the best grain 
binders was from $95 to $110, and the farm- 
ers enjoyed the advantage of healthy com- 
petition and rivalry among manufacturers 
and dealers. With the formation of the 
Harvester trust competition came to an end 
and the price of binders was sharply ad- 
vanced. 

86 



THE MORAL EFFECT 

At a recent hearing before the legislative 
grain trade committee in Minnesota Mr. 
Carl Rakow, a western farmer, gave some 
interesting testimony. This is the press re- 
port of the proceeding : 

"Mr. Rakow said that the International Harvester Company 
had fixed the price of grain binders at $150, and that this 
price remains stationary throughout the year, whether there 
was a market for the machine or not. He wanted the 
farmers to organize and sell their grain at a fixed price 
among them, notwithstanding the demand for their produce. 
^ " 'If the big business interests charge us stiff prices for 
what we buy, why shouldn't we charge big prices for what 
we sell?' said Mr. Rakow. 'It is the only protection we 
have. If we abolish the chambers of commerce, the grain 
commission men, and the line elevators, and actually control 
our own wheat, the farmers will get what is coming to 
them.' 

"Mr. Rakow illustrated his point by his own experience 
last year. He needed new binders. He went to town and a 
price of $150 was quoted him. All dealers quoted the same 
price. He went home and decided to fix up his old machines 
and use them for another year. Then he said the dealer had 
to store his binders for another year. 

" 'But,' he added, 'I was able to repair my binders. The 
people, however, can't repair their stomachs. They have to 
have bread to eat, and they would be compelled to buy our 
produce.' 

"He said that the farmers through the grain belt agreed 
with his theory, and they were being waked up to the point 
where they would some day perfect an organization. 

87 



THE WRECK 

" 'The farmer himself is responsible for his condition to-day.* 
continued Mr. Rakow. 'He has not made sufficient investi- 
gation and study of the grain industry to know how to help 
himself. I am telling them how to do it.'" 

Now Mr. Eakow does not undertake to 
excuse himself by explaining that there are 
''good trusts and bad trusts." As he is a 
plain every-day business man, not given to 
fine distinctions and preachments, he takes 
a practical view of the situation and adopts 
the old proverb that ''what is sauce for the 
goose is sauce for the gander." Nor does 
he undertake by the aid of finely spun 
theories to justify the proposed infraction 
of law. To the contrary, he comes at once 
to the crux of the situation and declares his 
purpose to organize a monopoly in order to 
equalize the exactions practiced by other 
monopolies. 

Whether he succeeds or not is another 
question ; his intent is no whit different from 
the intent of the Morgan group of trust pro- 
moters. No doubt he would say that he 
favors a "square deal," and his farmer 

88 



THE MOEAL EFFECT 

friends would grin their approval. If he, 
along with Roosevelt, has read moral philos- 
ophy, like Roosevelt he has not permitted 
morality to interfere with business. 

In his testimony before the Stanley com- 
mittee Colonel Roosevelt, with his usual air 
of defiance, said that were it to do over again 
he would disregard the anti-trust law and 
authorize the taking over of the Tennessee 
Coal and Iron Company by the Steel trust. 
^ If a President of the United States may do 
such a thing, are we to blame Mr. Rakow, 
the humble citizen? 

This Tennessee matter had been investi- 
gated during 1909-11 by a committee of 
seven of the ablest lawyers in the Senate. 
The report of the committee was that ^Hhe 
President was not authorized to permit the 
absorption of the Tennessee Coal and Iron 
Company." This report was signed by 
Senators Culberson, Kittridge, Overman, 
and Rayner. Senators Bacon and Nelson, 
in separate reports, said it was a violation 
of existing law, — the anti-trust law, — and 

89 



THE WRECK 

Senator Poraker for himself found that 
''the President had no power to suspend the 
law, or to authorize or even permit its en- 
forcement, for it is his duty to execute the 
law." No doubt Roosevelt's answer to this 
report would be that nearly all the senators 
who signed it were ^^reactionaries" and had 
never been friendly to him; whereupon his 
blind followers would set up a tremendous 
cheering. 

In further evidence of the Roosevelt 
method it should be stated that while this 
Senate investigation was in progress Com- 
missioner Smith of the Bureau of Corpora- 
tions was called before the committee to 
testify as to the headway he was making in 
his Steel trust investigation. This was in 
Pebruary, 1909. Smith refused to make 
known what had been done, and being ap- 
prehensive that the committee might possi- 
bly take summary steps to compel him to 
talk, he quickly got in touch with the Presi- 
dent. 

The result was that Roosevelt sent a van 

90 



THE MORAL EFFECT 

to the Department of Commerce and Labor 
and had the records of the Smith investiga- 
tion transferred to the White House and 
stored away in the attic, where they were 
kept under guard during the remainder of 
Eoosevelt's term! The fact of the removal 
of the records did not become publicly 
known until after the committee had fin- 
ished its work. 

y It will be recalled that the action of Presi- 
dent Roosevelt in the Tennessee Coal and 
Iron case was taken when, in November, 
1907, having previous advice of their com- 
ing to see him, he met Judge E. H. Gary and 
Mr. H. C. Frick, both of the Steel Corpora- 
tion. They came, it was said, to confer with 
him in regard to the so-called panic of that 
year, representing to him that in order to 
put an end to the money squeeze it would be 
necessary for the Steel trust to take over the 
Tennessee company, the greatest rival of the 
Steel trust, but that they desired to have it 
understood beforehand that they would not 
be prosecuted under the Sherman law ! 

91 



THE WEECK 

Roosevelt had previously taken the opin- 
ion of Secretary Root, who assured him that 
it would be '^a, perfectly legitimate transac- 
tion"; whereupon the next day the Presi- 
dent notified Attorney General Bonaparte 
that he ^^felt it no duty" of his *^to interpose 
objection." 

So it is that Mr. Rakow sees no harm in 
organizing the grain trust, the purpose of 
which is to increase the price of flour to 
ninety millions of people. 

In his report of December, 1911, Secre- 
tary McVeagh referred to the Morgan 
money squeeze of 1907 as ^^a gratuitous 
panic." The secretary's mild designation 
in classifying it created a sensation among 
the employees of the Treasury Department, 
where consideration for the feelings of J. P. 
Morgan has been very great indeed. To re- 
flect upon his motives there or even to think 
of him as being anything short of a high- 
minded and patriotic citizen was akin to the 
crime known as Use majeste. 

It is a significant fact that when Secre- 



THE MORAL EFFECT 

tary McVeagli retired from office he was not 
given a lucrative place in Wall Street, as 
had happened in the case of most of his im- 
mediate predecessors. Two months prior 
to the secretary's report President Taft 
had ordered that a bill in equity, a civil suit, 
be fded against the Steel trust. And there- 
by hangs a tale. It was the beginning of 
this suit no doubt and the temerity of Mr. 
McVeagh that helped to seal the fate of Mr. 
Taft as a candidate to succeed himself, — 
these and some other things which will be 
considered in subsequent chapters. The 
Morgan interests did not forget ^*to fight!" 
This, in brief, is an uncolored resume of 
Theodore Eoosevelt's stewardship during 
the seven and a half years of his administra- 
tion. It tells the story of his lawlessness; 
of his disregard for his solemn oath under 
the Constitution; of his contemptuous atti- 
tude toward the legislative branch of the 
Government ; of the suspension of proceed- 
ings against the Perkins monopoly in farm 
machinery, Mr. Perkins being his personal 

93 



THE WRECK 

friend and a large contributor to his cam- 
paign fund. 

In a speech in Boston in the summer of 
1912, pressed by a man in the audience to 
explain his close relations with Perkins, he 
said that he had never asked Perkins for 
political contributions; that Perkins had 
contributed of his own accord because, as he 
had declared, he favored the economic policy 
for which Roosevelt stood, — a policy of 
regulation and supervision of existing mo- 
nopolies; in other words, the legalization 
of the trusts; for it stands to reason that 
should the Government enter upon such a 
policy it would be equivalent to official rec- 
ognition of the legitimacy of the trusts. 

Thus would the past offenses of those who 
organized them be condoned, their trans- 
gressions of the law be forgiven, and their 
vast issues of securities, watered stock and 
all, — nearly a billion dollars in the case of 
the Steel trust, — be made lawful for all 
time, to remain a perpetual tax for this gen- 
eration and all future generations to pay. 

94 



THE POLITICAL RESULTS 

MONOPOLY, as a national institu- 
tion, is not the only Roosevelt leg- 
acy to which the American people 
have fallen heir through the violent and 
lawless acts of this remarkable man. 

It is not too much to say that had he done 
his duty in the thorough and effective way 
that his supporters in the 1900 convention 
believed that he would, the two great trusts 
which he permitted to develop, which he en- 
couraged by giving them official recognition, 
would not be in existence to-day, — at least, 
not in their present oppressive form. 

The early dissolution of the Steel trust, 
which was only a year old when Roosevelt 
took the oath as President, could have been 
accomplished had he notified the half dozen 
men who organized it that it was his inten- 
tion to deal summarily with them, in con- 

95 



THE WRECK 

formity with law. And it was not until 
after it became known that this the largest 
of the Morgan monopolies was to be per- 
mitted to continue in its unlawful course 
that the Harvester trust, the most audacious 
and vulnerable industrial combination now 
in existence, was put together by Mr. Per- 
kins, Mr. Roosevelt's personal and political 
friend, his present chief supporter. 

Congress, upon which Roosevelt never 
ceased to heap contumely and reproach in 
order that criticism be diverted from him- 
self, had given the country an anti-trust 
statute which, had it been enforced as its 
framers intended that it should be, would 
have served its purpose well. In respect of 
the men who conspired in the creation and 
did create the great monopolies of to-day, 
the criminal sections, — the real deterring 
provisions of the law, — have remained a 
nullity. 

It was in consequence of all this — exactly 
as is indicated by Guizot, where he speaks 
of ^'a terrible and transient dictatorship," 

96 



THE POLITICAL RESULTS 

— ^that the Republic has inherited a political 
hell-broth that will never cease to stew. 

In his last annual message (December, 
1900) "William McKinley spoke these hope- 
ful, patriotic words: 

"At the outgoing of the old and the incoming of the new 
century you begin the last session of the Fifty-sixth Congress 
with evidences on every hand of individual and national pros- 
perity and with proof of the growing strength and increasing 
power for good of republican institutions. Your countrymen 
wiH^ join with you in felicitation that American liberty is 
more firmly established than ever before, and that love for it 
and the determination to preserve it are more universal than 
at any former period of our history. 

"The Republic was never so strong, because never so strongly 
intrenched in the hearts of the people as now. The Constitu- 
tion, with few amendments, exists as it left the hands of its 
authors. The additions which have been made to it proclaim 
larger freedom and more extended citizenship. Popular gov- 
ernment has demonstrated in its one hundred and twenty-four 
years of trial here its stability and security, and its efficiency 
as the best instrument of national development and the best 
safeguard to human rights." 

Little did he think that within the next 
decade a dictatorship would be attempted 
and the dearest traditions of this ^4and of 
liberty" for which the fathers wrought 
would be dealt the blow that deadens; that 

97 



THE WRECK 

his successor, professing all the moral at- 
tributes of all previous Presidents, would so 
demean himself as to thwart the best en- 
deavors of an orderly nation and its well- 
disposed people. 

After some fashion we may succeed in 
ridding ourselves of the industrial incu- 
bus now enciunbering our progress, — the 
scourge inflicted through the connivance of 
a malcontent and pretender, — but there is 
little prospect that we shall ever be able to 
deliver ourselves of the prevailing night- 
mare evolved from the antics of a political 
madcap. 

Unfortunately, the whole grist of isms 
and unrepublican devices inspired and in- 
vited by Eoosevelt's excesses have come to 
stay. Having found their way, as a result 
of blind agitation, into the constitutions and 
statutes of a considerable number of states, 
they will remain there to turn sane men 
away from public life and to invite the dem- 
agog and the ambitious man with suffi- 
cient means to corrupt a whole common- 

98 



THE POLITICAL EESULTS 

wealth ; for this is the inevitable fruit of the 
propagandas which have led to the referen- 
dum and recall, the direct election of sena- 
tors and the popular skirt-dance in politics. 
It is ^^ progress'' gone mad, — an orgie of 
the unasylumed. In a word, it is the end of 
representative government, which James 
Wilson, one of the f ramers of the Constitu- 
tion, declared to be ''essential to every sys- 
^tem [of government] that can possess the 
qualities of freedom, wisdom, and energy." 
He was supported in this view by Mr, Jef- 
ferson, who, speaking of the ancients and 
their failures under ''pure democracies 
said: 



11 
1 



"They knew no medium between a democracy (the only pure 
republic, but impracticable beyond the limits of a town) and 
an abandonment of themselves to an aristocracy or a tyranny 
independent of the people." 

John Jay, a distinguished jurist who was 
one of the ablest early governors of New 
York, described the misfortunes of the dis- 
tracted people of these very times of ours in 
this striking language : 

99 



THE WRECK 

"Nothing can be more fallacious than to found our political 
calculations on arithmetical principles. Sixty or seventy men 
may be more properly trusted with a given degree of power 
than six or seven. But it does not follow that 600 or 700 
would be proportionately a better depository. And if we carry 
on the supposition to 6000 or 7000, the whole reasoning ought 
to be reversed. The truth is that in all cases a certain num- 
ber at least seem to be necessary to secure the benefits of free 
consultation and discussion, and to guard against too easy 
a combination for improper purposes; as, on the other hand, 
the number ought at most to be kept within a certain limit 
in order to avoid the confusion and intemperance of a multi- 
tude. In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character 
composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. 
Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian 
assembly would still have been a mob." 

Madison laid down this infallible rule by 
which to maintain the only kind of repre- 
sentative democracy: 

"The representation should be large enough to guard 
against the cabals of tlie few and small enough to guard 
against the confusion of the multitude." 

Measuring the estimate he appears to have 
placed upon the exalted position of Presi- 
dent of the United States by his own clown- 
ish conduct, the belief that Roosevelt is 
a man of ability and learning is open to 

100 



THE POLITICAL RESULTS 

some modification. A man may be able and 
yet dangerous when entrusted with public 
responsibilities. He may be learned in a 
scholarly sense, but if he uses both his nat- 
ural and his acquired talents to the injury 
of his country then verily is he a doubly 
dangerous person. 

Eoosevelt has done all this. As has al- 
ready been asked, did he do it uncon- 
sciously "? If so he must be possessed of a 
perverted mind. But what is the degree 
of his mental abnormity "^ The answer does 
not belong here ; it is not the province of this 
volume to invade the field of the alienist. 

Should it turn out that he is an object of 
government rather than one to have been 
trusted with government, perhaps the mis- 
guided men who assisted in foisting him 
upon the people in the first instance are 
equally objects of commiseration. 

As one of these misguided individuals, 
the writer hereof has not escaped nor does 
he hope ever to escape his proportion of hu- 
miliation and blame. The best he may do 

101 



THE WRECK 

is to acknowledge having committed a very 
great error. The deception arose in conse- 
quence of what at the time seemed to be a 
pressing public duty; for along with many 
others he realized the near approach of per- 
ilous days for the Republic, and thought he 
saw in this rising young man, who spoke so 
fairly, all the elements of honest leadership, 
— the qualities which make for and guaran- 
tee equal justice for rich and poor, for weak 
and strong alike. He mistook claptrap and 
wordy professions of virtue for promising 
signs of statesmanship. Simply this and 
nothing more. 

Monopoly, only a shadow looming threat- 
eningly in the distance in the fateful year 
of 1900, is now a power too great for even 
the Government to contend with in the hope 
of overthrowing it, unless by the interposi- 
tion of a miracle. This is the legacy which 
Mr. Roosevelt has left us. 

No one who has given the subject atten- 
tion and is familiar with the inner workings 
of the Washington machine can have any 

102 



THE POLITICAL RESULTS 

doubt that had Roosevelt called onto the 
White House carpet when he became Pres- 
ident the leading trust offenders of that 
time and told them that ''by the eternal" it 
was his intention to enforce the first three 
sections of the Sherman law, whether he be- 
lieved in them or not, the nation would have 
been saved from its present embarrassment. 
^ It was for this duty that he was put for- 
ward as the vice-presidential nominee at 
Philadelphia. The delegates who favored 
him, doubting not his capacity and integrity 
nor the existence of ample law under which 
to do this duty, believed that he would jus- 
tify their expectations. 

They were doomed to disappointment. 
He adopted the deceptive course of railing 
at the trusts in the open and taking their or- 
ganizers and promoters to his breast behind 
the scene. 

Sad as it may seem, it has come to be ex- 
pected that wherever Roosevelt goes and 
whenever he talks,— which is frequent 
enough, — he invariably exhibits his peculiar 

103 



THE WRECK 

man of straw, without which he would be 
most uninteresting. True, the improvised 
dummy has just enough vitality in it to ad- 
mit of its being unmercifully slugged. 

Roosevelt is seldom specific in his attacks, 
unless he has managed to select some help- 
less unfortunate as his victim, as he did in 
the case of poor old General Tyner. He is 
always at his best when, having assembled 
all the errors, imaginary or real, to which 
humanity is heir, he succeeds in making the 
multitude believe that all the faults of man- 
kind are combined in the single object of 
his assault. And when he has delivered his 
diatribe one is obsessed by a feeling that the 
whole world is bad beyond redemption, and 
will continue bad to the bitter end unless 
Roosevelt himself is called to redeem it. 

Is it not the role of the public bully with 
all the variations that belong to the insin- 
cere man, — to the athlete, self -trained in the 
acrobatics that pertain to a personality 
capable of changing itself at will to suit the 
occasion? Was it for this that John Har- 

104 



THE POLITICAL RESULTS 

vard came over from England to establish 
the now famous college at which our 
doughty reformer was matriculated ? 

It must be that our European friends who 
heard him on his return from Africa asked 
themselves this question many times. He 
had been to the dark places of the globe, 
there to give vent to the throbbing ferocity 
of his nature by slaughtering innumerable 
inoffensive wild animals. He found a de- 
gree of personal pleasure in it that we are 
still left to hope may have its compensatory 
rewards. The hides of the animals that he 
killed are in a museum for the curious to 
wonder at. 

But are we soon to outlive the unfavor- 
able impression he made abroad when as a 
former President of this Eepublic he ex- 
ploited before several learned bodies his 
varied talents as a preacher of righteous- 
ness at the expense of our own considerable 
store of integrity? To cultivated minds it 
must have been difficult enough to avoid the 
inference that while he was absent from the 

105 



THE WEECK 

United States a whole year killing big game 
his countrymen were without any protection 
whatsoever from their own iniquities. 

With their usual courtesy and accus- 
tomed politeness, the foreigners, always 
considerate of this nation and its men of 
prominence, dismissed the incident with the 
general verdict that the former President 
seemed to be given ^Ho the artful display of 
platitudes." And no wonder, after this 
specimen of his preachment at the Sor- 
bonne in Paris : 

"Woe to the empty phrase-maker, to the empty idealist, 
who, instead of making ready the ground for the man of 
action, turns against him when he appears and hampers him 
when he does the work!" 



a 



Mark the insinuating use of the term 
empty phrase-maker!" Had Roosevelt 
been hampered during his reign at home^ 
Had not Congress and the people given him 
a free hand? His auditors, however, must 
have thought the reverse to be true. He 
said further: 



106 



THE POLITICAL RESULTS 

"Moreover, the preacher of ideals must remember how 
sorry and contemptible is the figure which he will cut, how 
great the damage he will do, if he does not himself, in his 
own life, strive measurably to realize the ideals that he 
preaches for others." 

An unconscious self -indictment no doubt ! 
At wliom other than himself could he have 
been aiming'? Yet, to use a colloquial 
phrase, ^^it listened good," at least to the 
Rdosevelt ear. To the Sorbonne scholars 
undoubtedly it was a platitude. 

Intellectual France remembers the inci- 
dent only to challenge the soundness of our 
consistency. Two years after the Roose- 
velt performance in Paris, Rene Doumic, 
writer and Academician, had this to say 
about it: 

"It is by no means seldom that American thinkers instruct 
the Old World noisily in lessons which come strangely from 
their mouths. Thus two years ago ex-President Roosevelt, 
on his return from Africa, where he had just killed what lions 
Tartarin had left, gave in the official Sorbonne a lecture in 
which he laid down virtuous commandments for France in 
purposely rude and aggressive terms. What, then, was our 
surprise at the American Presidential election to find the 
whole campaign turned against the furious corruption which 
rules in all the administrative departments of the United 
States!" 



THE WRECK 

In his own country, however, where 
Roosevelt has continued and promises to 
continue his peculiar style of preaching; 
where political results are aimed at, the mat- 
ter takes a wider range, and his vocabulary 
finds greater variety. When revolving in 
his home orbit his language is something 
more than platitudinous ; to be at all effect- 
ive it must rise to the explosive point and 
seethe with invective, such as ^4iar," ^^scoun- 
drel," ^^ crook," and the like. 

Yet we who have come really to know him 
have accustomed ourselves not to tremble in 
physical fear. It is conceded in advance 
that all who do not agree with him are 
^^undesirable citizens." As time passes 
the number of these seems to be growing 
larger. 

It is a distinctive Roosevelt trait to as- 
sume that when he does or says a thing it is 
the act of a man who cannot be mistaken, 
and that only ^^ crooked people" will ques- 
tion his motives. Here again we have the 
familiar practice of the bluffer, who seeks 

108 



THE POLITICAL EESULTS 

to demoralize his opponent by making a 
bold rush to the center. 

That the author of this brief historical 
sketch is not alone in his estimate of Roose- 
velt 's character, as it revealed itself during 
his public career, the following very suc- 
cinct and accurate pen picture of the man 
is submitted, — an editorial from the New 
York World under the caption of ^^ Bluffed 
to a Standstill," written about the time 
Roosevelt became a candidate in 1912 : 

"Who would have thought one year ago that Theodore 
Roosevelt, as President and as man, would see this day free 
from Democratic criticism, free from arraignment by any 
respectable political agency and free from the necessity of 
making a defense of anything that he has done or left un- 
done? If anybody ever bluffed the American people to a 
standstill he is entitled to that distinction. 

"How has he done it? Not by deeds, but by words. Not by 
reason and argument, but by assertion and denunciation. Not 
by sincerity and truth, but by caprice, exaggeration, and 
recklessness. Not by single-mindedness and patriotism, but 
by impudence, arrogance, and shrieking hypocrisy. 

"He had great and admitted wrongs to contend with. He 
merely blustered and threatened. He had powerful criminals 
to punish. He ignored most of them, and by his violent 
methods made the administration of justice in the case of 
others almost a nullity. He inveighed mightily against 

109 



THE WEECK 

malefactors and undesirable citizens. He nevertheless enter- 
tained some of them in the White House. He demanded law 
and more law for the punishment of wealthy offenders. He 
then suspended law in the interest of the Steel trust. He 
preached peace and good-will. He practiced big-stickism and 
extravagance in war expenditure. Boasting of righteousness 
in himself and commending to others obedience to law, he used 
his great power to elevate favorites to high rank, to punish 
and pursue opponents with mean revenges, to deny to some 
men the protection of the law and to advance the idea that 
the executive and judicial departments might properly over- 
ride Congress, Constitution, and people. Scolding his country- 
men on matters of morals, deportment, and taste, he has given 
them an exhibition during this campaign of ill-behavior never 
before witnessed in the Presidential office. 

"This is the record. These are the false standards that he 
has established. This is the evil example that he has set for 
the young. These are the brutal assumptions that he has 
managed to carry away unchallenged by any authoritative 
political or popular protest. It is a remarkable showing of 
undisciplined fury in one man and of meek submission in 
millions of men equally free. 

"Personally he is to be congratulated upon his immunity. 
Collectively the people are to be commiserated because no 
Democratic champion has appeared in their behalf to enter 
so much as a complaint." 

The trouble with Eoosevelt when he had 
the power to punish the perpetrators of the 
great wrongs against which he strenuously 
inveighed was that he managed to shield 
those offenders whose bank accounts ap- 

110 



THE POLITICAL RESULTS 

peared to his mind large enough to outweigh 
their sins, — an invitation to the unscrupu- 
lous to go on offending so long as the wrong- 
doing produced more revenue for himself 
and his favored friends. It must have been 
for some such conduct as this that even 
Satan rebuked Belial. 

Unless life in general is one huge joke 
and all reformers of the Roosevelt stamp 
merely actors, the time may yet be when a 
serious and just-minded people will see a 
movement in the interest of an uplift in 
society that will be genuine and enduring. 
In that case it will be necessary to begin at 
the bottom and build toward the top, instead 
of violating the law of moral gravity by 
constructing downward with hypocrisy as 
a starting point. 



Ill 



PART II 
FOUR YEARS OF TAFT 



PART II 
FOUR YEARS OF TAFT 

COMPARED with the turbulent reign 
of Roosevelt, the four years of 
Taft in most respects were as a 
peaceful outing in blossoming Maytime, — 
not exactly a cessation of hysteria, but a 
most welcome diminishment in it, — a prom- 
ising period of much needed repose. 

To aU outward appearances nothing dis- 
turbed the large, serene, good-natured, and 
well-disposed man who was President from 
1909 to 1913, and who, seemingly, had a 
jolly time of it during the greater part of 
his term. In reality, however, his path 
was not strewn with roses ; like the rest of 
mankind he had his heartaches. 

The contrast between Roosevelt and Taft 
was very great; the contrast between their 

115 



THE WEECK 

respective administrations, greater still. 
Yet, in the matter of results accomplished, 
there was a close resemblance. Each in its 
own way was both destructive and disap- 
pointing. 

It was not on account of a lack of knowl- 
edge of the duties of the office that Roose- 
velt failed; it was because of an imperious 
disregard for the law, for the moral tone 
and traditional dignity that belongs to the 
position, because of the inordinate vanity 
of the man himself, because of his persist- 
ence in alone occupying the spotlight. 

Taft's failure was largely due to his un- 
fortunate conception of the principles of 
the party whose leader he was; and in a 
measure to very poor judgment in the mat- 
ter of important appointments when the 
course to pursue, from a political point of 
view, Avas as plain as a pikestaff. He had 
the misfortune also to surround himself 
with party advisers who knew as little about 
the necessities of the party as he did. It is 
always in order to play good politics well, 

116 



FOUR YEARS OF TAFT 

but those who had the confidence of the 
President and advised him politically ap- 
pear to have made him believe that it was 
wrong to indulge in any kind of politics. 

The circumstances under which Mr. Taft 
came to the Presidency were unusually pe- 
culiar. It is generally known, of course, 
that he preferred a place on the Supreme 
bench, for which he is eminently fitted. He 
is favored with the judicial mind, but, un- 
like Benjamin Harrison, who also would 
have made a great judge, he was a stranger 
to the arts of the politician, even in the best 
sense of the term. Harrison was a born 
statesman as well. He possessed to an ex- 
ceptional degree a firm grasp of the judicial, 
the legislative, and the executive functions. 

Taft was always the judge, and took the 
jurist's view of things. It is to be regret- 
ted that he did not await a vacancy on the 
Supreme bench. Instead he permitted 
himself to be put forward to occupy a posi- 
tion for which he was sadly imfit. It would 
be an unusual man, however, who would 

117 



THE WEECK 

pause for self-examination or who, should 
he do so, would reach an accurate conclusion 
in regard to his own qualifications for an J 
office such as the Presidency. 

In this particular instance Mr. Taft did 
not hesitate. How readily he yielded, not j 
so much to ambition perhaps as to the neces- 
sities of the situation, — as Roosevelt saw 
it, — ^may be judged by the sudden turn that 
Republican politics took in the early spring 
of 1908. Up to tliis time Taft was only a 
tentative candidate. 

A self-constituted committee of five sena- 
tors had been laboring with President 
Roosevelt to secure a pledge from him that 
he would stand for a '^ second elective 
term." The truth must be admitted that 
these senators were playing politics, — ^bad 
politics as it now appears, — and for once 
found Roosevelt ready to listen. Had he 
insisted upon doing the talking as usual, 
they would have been more confident. As 
the seemmg necessities of the case were un- 

118 



FOUR YEARS OF TAFT 

folded, however, lie became quite enthusias- 
tic. 

Notwithstanding Roosevelt's unexpected 
course in befriending the Morgan interests, 
— although even at that date only a few of 
the wisest insiders knew how close he was 
to those interests, — he seemed still to be the 
most popular and available man in the 
party. 

In a moment of excessive exuberance on 
the night of his election in 1904 he had is- 
sued a statement that he would not be a can- 
didate ''for a third term," quoting impres- 
sively from Washington's farewell address. 
In the campaign of 1912 he saw fit to ex- 
plain that he meant ''a third consecutive 
term." 

To the committee of five he said that he 
would leave the matter entirely in their 
hands; that he would not interfere with 
their efforts to secure his renomination, but 
would say nothing, conveying to their minds 
the impression that he w^ould accept if when 

119 



THE WRECK 

the time came it seemed the thing to do. 
That was all they asked. They would easily 
manage the rest of it. 

Much to their disgust, within thirty days 
from the date of that statement he renewed 
his declaration of four years before that he 
would not be a candidate. This put an end 
to the efforts of the committee. But, as al- 
ready said and as the public is aware, he 
changed his mind in 1912 and decided to 
take what Doctor Abbott has been pleased 
to term '^a third cup of coffee." 

Secretary Taft was not the only member 
of the Roosevelt cabinet who had Presi- 
dential aspirations. George B. Cortelyou, 
Secretary of the Treasury, sought the place, 
and while Mr. Taft was waiting for Roose- 
velt to decide his fate Mr. Cortelyou was 
making a vigorous but very stealthy can- 
vass for the support of Southern delegates. 
Having served as chairman of the national 
committee in the Roosevelt campaign of 
1904, his familiarity with the Republican 
machine, especially with the methods in 

120 



FOUR YEARS OF TAFT 

vogue in securing delegates from the South, 
was of very great advantage to him. 

It was understood, too, that his candidacy 
was agreeable to the Morgan interests, 
whose close connections with the Treasury 
Department were maintained through Sec- 
retary Cortelyou, as had been the case under 
former administrations. So close indeed 
were these connections about the time of 
the Panama Canal bond issue that Mr. Till- 
man, in a heated speech in the Senate, 
charged Mr. Cortelyou with having favored 
the Morgan house, to which the bonds were 
sold at a price below that of other respon- 
sible bidders. Senator Tillman's speech 
was never fully answered. 

By this time the Cortelyou quest for dele- 
gates had reached the serious stage, and 
President Roosevelt hastened to announce 
and did announce his decision in Mr. Taft's 
favor. That the candidacy of the sphinx- 
like little man of the Treasury portfolio 
should have made such headway without the 
knowledge of the White House management 

121 



THE WEECK 

was a great surprise to the politicians in 
Washington, who whispered their specula- 
tions to one another without wondering what 
it meant, for they knew its import. 

When ^^ Billy" Loeb, the President's im- 
perturbable yet watchful secretary, was 
questioned on the subject he answered with 
a dark, troubled look that it wasn't at all 
likely that his chief intended that the po- 
litical leadership in New York should pass 
out of his hands in such easy fashion, — not 
to George Bruce Cortelyou, between whom 
and the Roosevelt regime relations were 
now somewhat strained. Roosevelt himself 
showed evidence of personal annoyance. 

The truth is that neither he nor Mr. Taft 
had been fully aware of Mr. Cortelyou 's po- 
litical activities. The vague press reports 
concerning the Cortelyou candidacy had not 
impressed them, but now that the cat was 
out of the bag something must be done and 
that without delay. 

Accordingly, a hurried council of a few of 
Mr. Taft's friends was held at the White 

122 



FOUR YEARS OF TAFT 

House, after which a member of the cabinet 
went post-haste to New York. On his re- 
turn the political situation assumed a decid- 
edly new complexion. Frank Hitchcock, 
First Assistant Postmaster General, a 
friend and protege of Mr. Cortelyou, was 
then in the South, ostensibly on department 
l)usiness but in reality on a j^olitical mission 
in behalf of Mr. Cortelyou. In response to 
an imperative order from the "White House 
he returned to Washington and resumed his 
official duties. 

Events moved rapidly forward. A repre- 
sentative of the house of Morgan came over 
from New York to take part in the readjust- 
ment of preconvention affairs, with the re- 
sult that Mr. Cortelyou gave way to Mr. Taf t 
and accepted the presidency of the Consoli- 
dated Gas Company of New York, a Morgan 
corporation, at a salary of $25,000 a year. 
The Southern postmasters with whom Mr. 
Hitchcock had been negotiating were noti- 
fied that they would be expected to support 
Mr. Taf t instead of Mr. Cortelyou. In mat- 

123 



THE WRECK 

ters of this kind the gentlemanly politician 
from the South is never greatly disturbed by 
pride of opinion. All he wants is a ^^sure 
winner," — one who will not break patron- 
age promises. 

Now it would be unjust to Mr. Taft not 
to explain that in accepting the assistance 
of the Roosevelt machine he incurred no 
obligations to the powerful financial and 
industrial system that has its headquarters 
in New York. He was grateful to Colonel 
Roosevelt of course for what he had done 
to further his candidacy, and when he 
came to the Presidency he proved his grati- 
tude by appointing several of Roosevelt's 
friends to lucrative positions. 

Mr. Loeb was made collector of the port 
of ISTew York, and Messrs. Meyer and Stim- 
son were given places in the cabinet. Mr. 
Ballinger, whom Roosevelt had induced to 
give up his thriving law practice on the 
Pacific coast and accept the Commissioner- 
ship of the General Land Office, was pro- 
moted by President Taft to be Secretary of 

124 



FOUR YEARS OF TAFT 

the Interior. Thus another Roosevelt ad- 
herent was cared for. Mr. Pinchot, ar- 
dently admired by Mr. Roosevelt, was re- 
tained at the head of the Forestry Bureau 
until his acts of insubordination obliged 
the President to ask for his resignation in 
order to maintain himself in self-respect. 

Until then the relations between the 
former President and Mr. Taft had con- 
tinued on a basis of cordiality, and Repub- 
licans were looking hopefully forward to 
the time when the two leaders would again 
join hands for party success. Disappoint- 
ment awaited them. Smarting under his 
rebuke and bubbling over with ^'progres- 
siveness," Mr. Pinchot proceeded to Rome, 
where he met the returning hunter and 
poured out his grievances ad libitum and 
ad infinitttm. The Roosevelt ire was 
aroused; for had he not selected Mr. Taft 
to be his successor? This fact admitted 
of no dispute; it was a matter of common 
knowledge. Why, then, should not the 
Government forester be permitted to over- 

125 



THE WRECK 

ride the President if need be in order to 
carry out the Roosevelt ^^conservation 
policy," wliicli by this time, as many be- 
lieved, had developed into a sort of fetish? 

To what extent the Pinchot matter con- 
tributed toward Roosevelt's subsequent po- 
litical actions is of no great consequence, 
save that it is conceded to have opened the 
way to the final break that came with start- 
ling force in 1912. But this was not the 
sole cause of the rupture. Nor will the po- 
litical psychologist undertake to fathom the 
Roosevelt mind to determine the depths of 
his ambition. 

When Mr. Taft was slated as the Roose- 
velt candidate in 1908 it was generally sup- 
posed that he would follow the Roosevelt 
plan in dealing with certain trusts. This 
supposition found support in the readiness 
with which the Morgan interests acquiesced 
in the arrangement whereby the Cortelyou 
delegates were shifted to Mr. Taft. But, as 
has been said, Mr. Taft made no pledges 
to his political patron or to the patron's 

126 



FOUR YEARS OF TAFT 

patron, — the Morgan syndicate. He ac- 
cepted the honor as any true American 
would, without binding himself to a pro- 
gram. 

Doubtless his conception of the duties of 
the position was that the chief executive of 
an orderly nation is not to assume the role 
of a dictator over the two other branches of 
government, — the legislative and the ju- 
dicial. It was enough to have the constitu- 
tional prerogative of expressing his views 
through messages to the Congress and of 
enforcing the laws. If the tenor of these 
views and acts departed from the practices 
of his predecessor the fact would be ac- 
cepted as evidence that he had determined 
upon a line of policies of his own, for which 
his administration alone would stand re- 
sponsible. 

Mr. Taft did not depart from the gen- 
eral policy of his predecessor, however ; yet 
a gentler tone pervaded his messages. It 
was a grateful relief to the country. On 
the trust question he said in his first annual 

127 



THE WRECK 

message that the developments in the oper- 
ation of the law called for discussions and 
suggestions as to amendments, and that he 
would avail himself of the first convenient 
opportunity to bring the subject to the at- 
tention of Congress. A year later (De- 
cember, 1910) he said: 

"I do not now recommend any amendments to the anti- 
trust law. In other words, it seems to me that the existing 
legislation with reference to the regulation of corporations 
and the restraint of their business has reached a point where 
we can stop for a while and witness the effect of the vigorous 
execution of the laws on the statute books in restraining the 
abuses which certainly did exist and which roused the public 
to demand reform. If this test develops a need for further 
legislation, well and good; but until then let us execute what 
we have." 

A straightforward and concise expression 
of official opinion, devoid of platitudes, un- 
attended by sermonizing or vague insinua- 
tions that Congress had neglected its duty. 
He recognized the fact that abuses *^cer- I 
tainly did exist" and that the public had 
been roused ^^to demand reform." He 
showed the most generous consideration for 



128 



FOUR YEAES OP TAFT 

Mr. Roosevelt by putting the blame upon 
the monopolies themselves. Nor did he 
differentiate between the ^^good'' and the 
^^bad''; he played no favorites. 

In this respect he did depart somewhat 
from the policy of his predecessor, whose 
administration throughout had been de- 
voted to the protection of two notorious 
trusts. As to these Mr. Taft's mind was 
entirely open. But the time came when he 
decided that the Steel Corporation was a 
monopoly in restraint of trade, and he 
brought suit to compel its dissolution. 
That he did not proceed criminally against 
the men who organized the Steel trust was 
due no doubt to the fact that when he came 
to the Presidency the courts had before 
them the important Standard Oil and To- 
bacco cases. Here his judicial mind pre- 
vailed. He knew that the final decisions in 
these cases would be of an epoch-making 
character; that in all probability the court 
would fix the status of the trust in the eye 
of the law against combination. 

129 



THE WEECK 

As to the contributing causes which led 
to the sundering of the former friendly re- 
lations existing between the two party lead- 
ers, one no doubt was the incident resulting 
in Mr. Pinchot's retirement from the Bu- 
reau of Forestry, which he had succeeded in 
raising from a mere departmental division 
to an elaborate and expensive service that 
promised to supplant even the great gov- 
ernmental branch of which it was in law 
only nominally a small part. 

That the filing of the bill in equity 
against the Steel trust in October, 1911, was 
the principal cause of the rupture there can 
be little doubt. This was the causits helli. 
In the language of Mr. Perkins, already 
quoted in the Smith letter, '^it after all the 
endeavors of this company [the Harvester 
monopoly] and the other Morgan interests 
to uphold the policy of the administration 
[referring to the Roosevelt administration] 
this company was now to be attacked, the 
interests he represented were going to 
fight," and, as Mr. Smith himself concluded, 

130 



FOUR YEARS OP TAFT 

''the mere refusal of the Steel Corporation 
to give information except at the end of a 
lawsuit . . . would be the first step in 
the fight.'' 

At the date of the initial proceeding in 
the Steel trust suit Mr. Taft was not aware 
of the threat that had been made by Mr. 
Perkins, for the Smith letter was a confi- 
dential conmiunication to Colonel Roosevelt 
while he was President and was not made 
public until the office copy of it came from 
the private files of the department in re- 
sponse to a Senate resolution during the 
campaign of 1912. It is doubtful, how- 
ever, if the Perkins threat would have de- 
terred Mr. Taft even had he known about 
it. 

Another interesting fact is that imme- 
diately upon the filing of the Steel trust suit 
Colonel Roosevelt allowed himself to get 
exceedingly busy in a political way. About 
this time he received several visits from 
Mr. Perkins at Oyster Bay. At once the 
mistakes of the President, — they were not 

131 



THE WRECK 

few, — were seized upon by the Roosevelt 
following, to be exploited industriously in 
hostile publications. Colonel Roosevelt 
took personal charge of the campaign and 
wrote many letters to political leaders, — 
those having grievances against the Taft 
administration. 

The first pronounced movement in the 
interest of his third term candidacy was the 
meeting of the ^^ seven governors" in New 
York and Roosevelt's significant reply to 
them. Thereafter the contest grew rapidly 
to proportions that portended the certainty 
of a bolt at the Chicago convention. On 
the side of Colonel Roosevelt campaign 
funds soon came to be very abundant, and 
long before the Taft machine could be or- 
ganized for effective work Messrs. Perkins, 
Flynn, Munsey, and other opulent cru- 
saders who hastened to Armageddon had as- 
sembled a working force beside which the 
Taft contingent resembled a little confer- 
ence of threadbare missionaries. 

With the dexterity of the trained organ- 

132 



FOUR YEARS OF TAFT 

izers that they were, the Roosevelt leaders 
enlisted the services of an army of experi- 
enced Republican politicians, leaving Taft 
dependent upon a small number of ad- 
herents of doubtful efficiency. 

As has been said, it was Mr. Taft's mis- 
fortune to have surrounded himself with 
men having little or no experience in the 
field of politics, and strangely enough he 
rejected the advice and proffered aid of 
those who had made party management in 
the largest sense a lifelong study. It was 
as if he had gone to sea in a leaky ship with 
a crew of landlubbers who would be in great 
luck indeed if they succeeded in running the 
vessel on a rock. In any event the conse- 
quence was disaster to the party, and the 
surprise is that Mr. Taft even got the nom- 
ination. 

The gentlemen who conducted his press 
bureau had some practical knowledge of 
the necessities of the campaign, and had 
they not been hindered and handicapped by 
the ''management" a much better showing 

133 



THE WRECK 

would have been made. The President 
himself seemed sadly bewildered, and while 
he and Chairman Hilles were holding con- 
ferences on the Mayflower far out at sea 
Roosevelt, Perkins, Flynn, and other bull 
moose sappers and miners, under the ex- 
pert direction of Senator Joe Dixon, the 
astute politician and mixer, were in the 
midst of the fray on land where the voters 
were. In this situation the Democrats had 
but to rest on their oars and wait for elec- 
tion day for the certainty of success. 



134 




SOME TARIFF BUNGLING 

UT the defeat of the Taft ticket and 
the disaster visited upon the Repub- 
lican party were not due alone, as 
many suppose, to the extraordinary con- 
duct of Theodore Roosevelt, or to Mr. 
Taft's indorsement of the Payne- Aldrich 
law, or to both these things combined. It 
all came about in consequence of the Presi- 
dent's unexpected and inexplicable depar- 
ture from deeply rooted party principles; 
in other words, his fathering of the tariff 
project known as Canadian reciprocity, 
which was grossly misnamed, for there was 
no reciprocity in it. 

It was this departure from Republican 
policy that made the Roosevelt candidacy 
possible. Mr. Taft invited it, uncon- 
sciously no doubt. Had he known as much 
of politics as McKinley knew or as Harrison 

135 



THE WRECK 

and Blaine knew, or had he first taken the 
opinion of a few practical politicians and 
followed their advice, both he and his party 
would have escaped the drubbing they got 
in 1912. It is possible that they might not 
have escaped defeat, but it would not have 
been an overwhelming defeat. 

Undoubtedly a strong sentiment existed 
in favor of a ^^ downward revision of the 
tariff," and it is also true that the framers 
of the law of 1909 might have gone further 
than they did in that direction. Still it 
was a Republican tariff law, in some re- 
spects an improvement upon the Dingley 
act, in many other ways far from being 
what the country really demanded. On the 
whole, however, it followed the lines of pre- 
vious protection measures and in addition 
contained some new provisions which were 
afterward used to the advantage of domes- 
tic industry. 

For Mr. Taft to have vetoed or even to 
have withheld his signature from the bill 
would have brought about a division in his 

136 



SOME TARIFF BUNGLING 

party of far-reaching consequences. Yet, 
within less than a year from the date of his 
Winona speech, in which he said the Payne- 
Aldrich law was the best tariff measure 
ever enacted, he called Congress together 
in extra session to repeal some of its most 
salient provisions, — to remove the duty in 
tofo on all products of the farm coming in 
from Canada, the most considerable pros- 
pective competitor of domestic agriculture. 

Republican leaders throughout the coun- 
try were amazed. To strike suddenly and 
directly at the interests of more than eleven 
million farmers; to propose the removal of 
the whole of the duty of thirty cents a 
bushel on wheat and place all other grains 
on the free list, together with dairy and 
other farm products, was something that 
no one familiar with our tariff history could 
comprehend. 

Of course the Democrats might be ex- 
pected to support the proposition, as it gave 
rise to serious dissension in Republican 
ranks. The spectacle of William Howard 

137 



THE WRECK 

Taft and Champ Clark advocating the 
scheme from the same platform at the same 
hour would have been humorous had it not 
been so very serious to the cause of Repub- 
licanism, whose faithful adherents could 
but exchange regrets and turn to their 
party archives to ascertain if really they 
were not dreaming. 

Could this be the man who less than three 
years before had received 321 out of 483 
electoral votes as the candidate of the party 
of protection? — ^who had carried almost 
every grain-raising state in the Union? 
Was the American farmer, whose material 
interests had been so long and so valiantly 
upheld by James G. Blaine and William 
McKinley, to be sacrificed? Where was 
the party warrant for this strange proceed- 
ing? Had it been demanded in any Repub- 
lican platform? Was it in consequence of 
a sudden uprising of the people against the 
well-settled doctrine of protection to Amer- 
ican industry? Assuredly it was not. 

Having freed the slave, naturally enough 

138 



SOME TARIFF BUNGLING 

the further mission of the Republican party 
was to put the nation on a revenue basis, — 
that is, to provide the statutory machinery 
whereby to encourage the development of 
the country's resources. It was agreed 
among the Republican leaders of those days 
that the most speedy means by which to 
bring this about was in the enactment of 
laws embodying the principles of a pro- 
tective tariff. 

This policy, as party history proves, had 
been fully outlined and advocated in Re- 
publican platforms and as energetically 
condemned by the Democrats. It had been 
consistently carried forward, however, un- 
til the inequalities that always creep into 
tariff laws. Republican and Democratic 
alike, created that revulsion in public feel- 
ing which resulted in the election of Mr. 
Cleveland in 1884. Emboldened by their 
partial political success, the Democrats, 
with the tariff again the issue, asked the 
people for full responsibility, promising the 
complete overthrow of protected privilege. 

139 



THE WEECK 

The voters did not respond affirmatively. 
In 1888 the pendulum swung back, with the 
result that in 1890 a most comprehensive 
protection measure, — the McKinley law, — 
was enacted. 

Before the full effect of this law could be 
felt, and as a result of systematic agitation, 
a Democratic minority was transformed 
into a working majority. In 1894 the Wil- 
son-Gorman law, which was neither ^^fish, 
flesh, fowl, nor good red herring," found its 
way to the statute book. Hard times fol- 
lowed this effort at tariff tinkering. 
Whether the business depression that came 
to pass was well founded or not will per- 
haps continue to be a matter of dispute. 
The fact remains, however, that the Amer- 
ican people reversed the Government's eco- 
nomic policy in 1896, since which time the 
protective principle has prevailed. 

Eeference to these historical events at 
this time is necessary in order to emphasize 
the fact that the majority of the people are 
inherently in favor of judicious protection, 

140 



SOME TARIFF BUNGLING 

equally distributed to benefit every line of 
industry. Revolts against the principle 
have been solely in consequence of its abuse. 
The demand for ^^ downward revision" in 
1909 was based upon the popular belief that 
conditions, — the hugeness and the growing 
power of certain protected industries, — 
called for a scaling down of duties, not for 
a complete reversal of our fiscal policy. 

This being true, the course of the Taft 
administration in 1911 in putting forward 
the one-sided and altogether unique pro- 
gram of '^reciprocity" with Canada has not 
ceased to be a source of surprise and sor- 
row. Mr. Taft's sincerity has never been 
questioned ; it was his amazingly bad judg- 
ment that will always be regretted by the 
great majority that gave him valiant sup- 
port in 1908 and particularly by those loyal 
Republicans who refused to desert him in 
1912. 

This was his first and undoubtedly his 
greatest political blunder, and it took the 
heart out of the campaign for his reelec- 

141 



THE WRECK 

tion. Taft himself may survive it, but Ms 
X)arty never. That he should have allowed 
himself to be led into making this egregious 
mistake is one of the incomprehensible 
things in politics. Surely it could not have 
been his own original idea, for he is not 
given to whimsicalities. 

It is easv to understand how, with his 
superficial knowledge of tariff matters, he 
could have been misled. Yet it is difficult 
to realize how he came to indorse a scheme 
which, while it freelisted the products of 
the farm, retained protective duties on all 
manufactures. Of course the selfish ele- 
ment in New England wanted it ; to them it 
meant an extension of the list of free raw 
materials. The Steel and Harvester trusts 
wanted it. They wanted it because the 
profits on the sale of their goods in Canada, 
where for the most part they are the agents 
for their own products, would be increased 
by the exact amount of the tariff reductions 
proposed by the Dominion. As the Amer- 
ican manufacturer has practically no com- 

142 



SOME TARIFF BUNGLING 

petition in Canada, there would be no 
corresponding reduction of the prices which 
the Canadian consumer must pay. The 
merest tyro in tariffs would have seen this 
at a glance. 

As an instance of the abuse of the pro- 
tective system, New England demanded 
and got free hides in the interest of cheaper 
shoes ; yet with free hides the price of shoes 
went up. So too would it have been had the 
Canadian agreement become law; with 
farm products on the free list the price of 
manufactured articles would have remained 
the same. 

From the standpoint of fairness no sub- 
stantial objection can be made to an ar- 
rangement for absolute free trade between 
Canada and the United States as to every 
class of products, but alas ! such an arrange- 
ment would not be acceptable to certain of 
our manufacturers. Thus is protection 
made the instrument of selfishness rather 
than of common benefit. It is this sort of 
thing that has brought the institution into 

143 



THE WRECK I 

disrepute, turning even its friends against 
it. 

ISTo one appears to know who first Mt 
upon the idea of this strange brand of 
^^reciprocity." It has been suggested that 
perhaps it was evolved out of the exigencies 
of politics in Canada. Also that it was 
conceived in the masterful brain of James 
J. Hill, who has some twenty branch lines 
of railway which he is ready to push across 
our northern boundary. There is profit in 
the long-haul, with tariff dues abolished ! 

According to still another theory, it is 
said that Secretarv Knox, as an offset to the 
offensive and defensive alliance between 
England and Japan, sought through this 
trade pact to win the Canadians away from 
the home government and make them our 
friends in case of a war between the United 
States and Japan, — a piece of diplomacy 
that is almost incredible. Yet even this 
may find justification in the pressing neces- 
sities of ^^big business." 

Mr. Hill's purpose to extend his numer- 

144 



SOME TARIFF BUNGLING 

ous branch roads into Dominion territory, 
the Dominion guaranteeing the interest on 
the construction bonds, has some substance 
in it, for it is in line with his policy of em- 
pire building. But that it should be neces- 
sary to inflict a loss upon the American 
farmer in order to advance the interests of 
a railway corporation already fat with do- 
mestic prosperity seems unreasonable. 

It was pointed out, of course, that the 
domestic farmer would not be injured. 
This argument was used by both President 
Taft and Mr. Hill, the one speaking in Cin- 
cinnati at the same hour that the other 
spoke in Minneapolis. But it is a singular 
coincidence that the market reports of the 
great dailies which printed these speeches 
showed a declme of ten cents a bushel in the 
price of wheat at Minneapolis, the result of 
the pact proposal, and that it did not rise 
to normal protection figures until after 
Canada had voted down the scheme. 
Under protection the domestic price of 
farm products has always been higher than 

145 



THE WRECK 

the price for the same products in 
Canada. 

Another significant thing was that during 
the pendency of the agreement, with wheat 
decidedly lower, the price of flour remained 
stationary; nor did the poor man's loaf 
come the least bit cheaper. Here the 
American millers' trust, which was strong 
for reciprocity, had its innings and scored 
heavily. 

It was upon the petition of the millers 
five or six years prior to this that Secretary 
Shaw and Attorney General Moody set 
aside the drawback law so as to allow 
the free importation of Canadian wheat. 
Their plans were thwarted, however, and 
the integrity of the law was preserved by a 
combination of circumstances which the 
millers' trust failed to overcome. In a 
larger way the reciprocity project was a 
repetition of what had been proposed by 
those who sought to nullify the draw^back 
law. 

The movement for reciprocity was 

146 



SOME TARIFF BUNGLING 

further stimulated by the claim that if the 
products of the Canadian farmer were 
brought mto the United States free of duty 
the problem of the high cost of living would 
be solved, and the friends of the Knox- 
Laurier pact lost no opportunity to pro- 
claim this as a great discovery. Precisely 
the same experiment had been tried in 
1850, and after ten years of unsatisfactory 
results the scheme was abandoned. 

In proposing a return to the rejected 
policy of fifty years ago it was claimed that 
conditions had changed; that the time had 
come for ''the cementing of more friendly 
relations with Canada by closer commercial 
intercourse." 

The sympathy and assistance of the 
American press had been enlisted by in- 
corporating a clause in the pact providing 
for the free admission into the United 
States of the pulp of wood and news print 
paper. Hence the flood of favorable com- 
ment in the daily press, the magazines, and 
other periodicals, whose bills for paper at 

147 



THE WRECK 

constantly increasing prices, which, of 
course kept pace with the increasing weight 
of the Sunday edition, was a strong argu- 
ment against '^the high cost of living," and 
in favor of ^^the cementing of closer rela- 
tions with our northern neighbors." 

But there was one class of publications, 
— the farm journals, — that did not take 
kindly to the proposition. They were not 
slow to see and to say that while reciprocity 
might be a good thing for the manufacturer 
it was a singular fact that the farmer had 
been selected to *'pay the freight." 

To the disinterested observer it looked 
very much as if the promoters of the pact 
had done a lot of mighty fine figuring ! To 
Republicans who held fast to the protection 
faith that was in them it seemed as if Presi- 
dent Taft had permitted Secretary Knox 
to carry his ^^ dollar diplomacy" policy to 
the point of disaster. The disaster came 
in November, 1912, when the Republican 
national candidate lost every Republican 
state along the Canadian boundary line save 

148 



SOME TARIFF BUNGLING 

one, and this one, — ^Vermont, — lie carried 
by the insignificant plurality of something 
like 900 votes. 

But for this tariff blunder on the part of 
the Taft administration it is doubtful 
whether Colonel Roosevelt would have 
thrown his hat into the ring. While it did 
not justify the bolt at Chicago, the reci- 
procity incident made Taft's reelection im- 
possible, and the Roosevelt candidacy did 
not matter. No blame attaches to the party 
for what happened, and had Mr. Taft con- 
sulted the party leaders generally, instead 
of following the advice of a half dozen 
gentlemen afflicted with political provincial- 
ism and infeasible ideals, it is doubtful if 
he would have taken the fatal step. 

True, the scheme was immediately in- 
dorsed by Colonel Roosevelt and other so- 
called '^Progressives,'' but when the 
mighty hunter, his political ear always to 
the ground, heard the loud protests from 
the fields, he quickly changed round, say- 
ing that '^ having looked into the matter 

149 



17 



THE WRECK 

lie had found that Taft was wrong, — a 
somewhat belated admission that he him- 
self was in error when he delivered his 
three memorable speeches in favor of the 
project. However, those speeches were 
made at a time when the whole comitry, 
through a well-baited press, seemed to favor 
it; when Mr. Taft's close advisers were ex- 
ultingly claiming that he would sweep the 
country on the reci^orocity issue. For had 
not even the Democrats indorsed it! 

Although the Canadians had rejected the 
agreement prior to our Presidential elec- 
tion, the American farmer did not forget to 
use his vote to express his opinion in regard 
to the i3roposal that he should bear the 
whole burden of this new kind of tariff re- 
duction. He remembers even now the 
teachings of Blaine and McKinley, who 
never overlooked the importance of con- 
serving the home market to the tillers of the 
soil. 

In his *' Twenty Years in Congress" Mr. 
Blaine made the prediction that when the 

150 



SOME TARIFF BUNGLING 

Republican party so far forgot its obliga- 
tion to the American farmer as to take 
from him his due proportion of protection 
it would go out of politics. After writing 
these prophetic words Mr. Blaine came to 
be one of our most distinguished Secre- 
taries of State, where he was called upon to 
consider our trade relations abroad, partic- 
ularly with the Pan-American countries. 

In his time he was the foremost advocate 
of reciprocity, but not the kind that would 
make our own farmers the victims of the 
free list. To his mind even the suggestion 
of such a suicidal course would have been 
repellent. 

The attitude of McKinley on the question 
of trade agreements is summed up in a 
single sentence. In his last public address, 
—his Buffalo speech,— he said that reci- 
procity was ''the natural outgrowth of our 
wonderful industrial development under 
the domestic policy now firmly established" 
(referring to the doctrine of protection). 
But he laid down this rule of procedure,— 

151 



THE WRECK 

that ^^we should take from our customers 
such of their products as we can use with- 
out harm to our own industries and labor.'' 
This is genuine reciprocity. 

How few there were in 1911 who distin- 
guished between the brand of reciprocity 
that Blaine and McKinley believed in and 
that proposed by Mr. Taf t ! It is to be re- 
gretted that there were so few publishers 
who were willing to admit the difference. 
Could it have been on account of their per- 
sonal interests in securing to themselves 
the supposed benefits of free wood pulp ? 

Admittedly, the press is a mighty force 
in shaping public opinion, but that it should 
be thus used to selfish ends detracts exceed- 
ingly from the noble profession of journal- 
ism. In recent years this formidable | 
power has been unduly exercised, illustra- 
ting in a variety of ways the evils of the pre- 
vailing tendency to combination in all lines 
of business. 

A combination of newspapers and other 
publications to achieve pecuniary results of 

152 



SOME TAEIFF BUNGLING 

advantage to the ^^ business office" is quite 
as reprehensible as is the organization of 
an industrial monopoly, so freely de- 
nounced in editorial columns. The framers 
of the Sherman law, out of an abundance 
of caution no doubt, did not undertake to 
deal specifically with the matter of a pos- 
sible trust of publishers. 

A monopoly of editorial opinion was a 
thing scarcely to be conceived of. Yet it 
has come to pass. Even a President of the 
United States, before embarking upon a 
voyage on the sea of public policy, has 
deemed it advisable, in the interest of his 
doubtful enterprise, to ^^ throw a sop to 
Cerberus." The friends of the pact real- 
ized that in order to succeed with the jug- 
handled scheme it would be necessary to 
hold out the inducement of cheaper news 
print. 

As a further illustration of the hypocrisy 
of the times, it is no misstatement of fact 
to say that the seemingly righteous demand 
for the modern election devices, such as 

153 



THE WEECK 

the direct primary, the initiative, the refer- 
endum and the recall, has been greatly 
stimulated by the concessions made to local 
editors by local politicians for the more 
elaborate publication of profitable election 
notices and the printing of tons of political 
literature. Profit, always profit of a ma- 
terial kind! 

A more recent example of the demoraliz- 
ing and hypocritical attitude of the pub- 
lisher politicians is found in the program 
of denunciation adopted by the metropoli- 
tan newspapers that protested so vigorously 
against the payment by them of just and 
equitable rates of postage on the train loads 
of advertising pages which are carried by 
the Government at enormous financial loss 
to the people. And what do the people 
get in return *? ^^Free speech!" answers 
the subsidized press, — ^Hhat is, the freedom 
of the press is maintained, which is the 
same as free speech for the people." Was 
it in the interest of free speech to stifle pub- 
lic opinion in regard to Taft reciprocity? — 

154 



SOME TARIFF BUNGLING 

to force editorial trust opinion down the 
public throat "^ We shall read much during 
this extra session of Congress about 
^^ sugar senators." It may not be amiss to 
keep an eye out for pulp publishers. 

Here in the United States we indulge in 
extravagant denunciation of ''the barbaric 
methods of Eussia" because it maintains a 
place of exile for those who conspire at the 
destruction of the political and social struc- 
ture of the empire. Yet, in this land of 
'^free speech" we truculently cater to such 
conspiracies, trusting to a credulous and 
easily bamboozled public to condone the 
sins of our false teachers; with the result 
that these same sins not only go imcor- 
rected but, through lax custom, they grow 
into national virtues. The unexampled 
record of the lawless Eoosevelt is a case in 
point. 

As to Mr. Taft there are some mitigating 
circumstances. After designing men with 
selfish interests to serve had set the reci- 
procity trap it was pointed out to him that, 

155 



THE WRECK 

being in need of a popular issue, by spring- 
ing the trigger promptly lie could reduce 
the high cost of living and gain great credit 
for his administration at a single stroke. 
It was a seductive proposal. 

Even the chance of reducing the high cost 
of living was a sufficient incentive to stir 
any man to action. There were many 
theories in regard to the cause and a variety 
of remedies were proposed. 

What at times seem to us to be our great- 
est troubles are often explained away in 
the simplest fashion. It was recently dis- 
covered that Chicago housewives pay ten 
cents a head for cabbages, while down in 
Texas large quantities of this excellent 
vegetable are rotting in the fields. Would 
not this indicate that there is something 
wrong with our system of distribution "? 
There is no duty on cabbages between Texas 
and Chicago! 

Only a short while ago onions sold at 
fifteen cents a pound at Laredo, Texas. 
Just outside of the city the grower was re- 

156 



SOME TARIFF BUNGLING 

ceiving two cents a pound. Who got the 
650 per cent, profit '^ Potatoes went to 
w^aste last season in the fields about Cum- 
mington, Mass. In Worthington, a near- 
by town, they were selling at $1.50 a 
bushel. 

These and many other facts that may or 
may not belong to the ^^ deadly parallel'' 
order came out recently at a meeting of the 
National Conference on Marketing and 
Farm Credits, where one of the delegates 
said that ^^ somebody else is getting the 
money for nearly everything that farmers 
grow.'' 

The secretary of the Consumers' League, 
conducting an exhibition at St. Louis to 
demonstrate adulteration of foods, said that 
pineapple and lemon pies as they come 
from many bakeries consist of artificial 
flour paste, glucose, benzoic acid, and coal 
tar dye ; that apple tart was mostly timothy 
seed and anodyne dye made from bitumi- 
nous coal refuse, while chocolate icing was 
composed of artificial flour paste, glucose, 

157 



THE WEECK 

benzoic acid, and burnt umber dye, and that 
some baking powders were made by grind- 
ing white stone to fine dust. 

Surely pineapples, lemons, and the good 
old orchard fruit of our boyhood are plen- 
tiful and cheap enough in first hands, so that 
these practices cannot be explained on any 
other ground than that those who perpetrate 
such wrongs are a part of the conscience- 
less system that manipulates the prices of 
the necessaries of life; and it must be that 
these in their turn are only following the 
example of the gentlemen who have made 
enormous fortunes organizing the big mo- 
nopolies. 

Now in such conditions it would seem to 
be the part of wise statesmanship to deal 
first wdth the greater offenders, — those who 
set the evil example. The parent who 
would correct the bad morals of the child 
would begin by separating him from de- 
basing influences, pointing out the danger- 
ous consequences of corrupt associations. 
To effect a cure it might be necessary to 

158 



SOME TARIFF BUNGLING 

inflict condign punishment upon the orig- 
inal transgressor. 

But for the flagrant conduct of the ^*big 
brainy men" who have saddled the people 
with $35,000,000,000 of fictitious interest- 
bearing securities it is doubtful if the food 
adulterers and other lesser malefactors who 
have found a way to cheat the consuming 
public would have had the hardihood to 
prosecute their illegal traffic. 

It was the greater offenders against the 
law and ^^ common decency," concerning 
which Colonel Roosevelt has had so much 
to say and against which he accomplished 
practically nothing, who set the pace for the 
army of little crooks of commerce now in- 
dustriously at work, — who conceived the 
fraudulent scheme of reciprocity in their 
own selfish interest. 

That President Taft did not realize the 
purpose of it, — that he should have per- 
mitted himself to be misled, — is to be re- 
gretted. Harrison, McKinley, and Blaine 
would have seen at a glance what it meant 

159 



THE WEECK 

to their party, for they were practical poli- 
ticians; and practical politics is closely 
allied to practical statesmanship. A knowl- 
edge of both is necessary if a President is 
to succeed and leave his party intact at the 
end of his term. 



160 



MORE BAD POLITICS 

BUT the reciprocity blunder was not 
the only serious political mistake 
made by Mr. Taft while he was at 
the head of national affairs, and for which 
the Eepublican party is now ^^in sackcloth 
and ashes." 

There has been a singular disinclination 
among politicians to discuss the appoint- 
ment of Edward D. White to the position 
of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of 
the United States, for the reason perhaps 
that it involves a sectarian question. Poli- 
ticians are extremely wary in regard to 
matters of this knd ; yet almost every voter 
in the country has expressed his opinion 
about it. 

Now it is not the purpose of the writer 
to enter upon the question of the right or 
wrong of this act of Mr. Taft's, save as 

161 



THE WEECK , 

it concerns party politics. The author 
hereof concedes the eminent fitness of Chief 
Justice White, whose personal friend he is. 
Not every one has agreed with the conclu- 
sions reached in some of the distinguished 
jurist's opinions, but no one will deny that 
he has a very profound and conscientious 
legal mind. In this regard President Taft 
made no mistake. 

From a political point of view, however, 
he showed his usual poor judgment, antag- 
onizing as he did the very large Protestant 
element of the country, and in addition dis- 
pleasing the veterans of the civil war. The 
answer to this will be that those who by 
their votes expressed their objection to 
Justice White's preferment are very nar- 
row-minded and bigoted citizens. Perhaps 
so; yet the fact remains that the ap- 
pointment created widespread feeling of re- 
sentment, and therefore its influence in the 
last Presidential campaign was very great. 

For this reason it stands against Mr. 
Taft as the leader to whom the interests of 

162 



MORE BAD POLITICS 

the party had been entrusted. The inci- 
dent could have been avoided by the ap- 
pointment of Justice Harlan, who was in 
line for the place. Public sentiment, par- 
ticularly party sentiment, was on the side 
of the grand old American jurist. He was, 
besides, the choice of a great many eminent 
members of the bar, who had no doubt about 
his qualifications. 

As has been suggested, it is not Mr. Taft 
alone who is left to suffer for such things; 
the great Republican party has been more 
than equally the victim. In the elevation 
of Justice White, as well as in the matter 
of so-called reciprocity, Mr. Taft seems to 
have proceeded without any thought of his 
party's welfare. When he became the Re- 
publican candidate the party was in a most 
prosperous political condition. He left it 
in a situation of pitiable helplessness, from 
which recovery wiU be tediously slow. 

Had Roosevelt and Taft conspired to- 
gether for the overthrow of the great or- 
ganization which gave them all they ever 

163 



THE WRECK 

had of political recognition, they could not 
have hit upon more effective methods of de- 
struction than the ones that each of these 
distinguished men saw fit to adopt. 



164 



TAFT AND THE TEUSTS 

IN" some other respects, however, Mr. 
Taft rose quite to the heights of states- 
manship, and his analysis of some im- 
portant court decisions and their applica- 
tion to present conditions proves his very 
great ability as a lawyer. 

It must not be forgotten that he suc- 
ceeded to the duties of President in very 
trying times. As has been so often said, 
Roosevelt was a hard man to follow. 
Throughout his long lease of power he 
stirred the popular imagination until it be- 
came a ferment of uncontrollable passion. 
At the end of his service the public mind 
was in a state of revolt, — Mexicanized and 
vengeful. 

By winking at criminal infractions of the 
law, Roosevelt had managed not only to in- 
crease the country's ills but to leave the im- 

165 



THE WEECK 

pression that they were due to the corrupt 
practices of indefinite persons and to forces 
so potent that he had been unable to subdue 
them. The people were impatient for the 
realization of the reforms which he had art- 
fully outlined but had never secured. 

When Taft came in the courts were 
gorged with suits the pleadings of which 
were replete with doubtful terms. Among 
them were the cases against the Standard 
Oil and the Tobacco trusts. An examina- 
tion of the record in these cases raises in 
the mind of the close casuist a question 
of doubt as to the entire sincerity of their 
instigators. They were the product of 
able lawyers, it is true; yet, after reading 
Justice Harlan's dissenting opinion, one is 
impressed with the thought that here and 
there the pleadings were lacking in vitality, 
whilst in other parts they appeared to be 
packed with confusing redundancy. 

However, Mr. Taft had nothing to do 
with the pleadings nor with the appeals. 
The Government's case had been fully made 

166 



TAFT AND THE TRUSTS 

■up before lie came to the Presidency. The 
future attitude toward monopoly was now 
in the hands of the Supreme Court, and the 
administration could but await the decision 
of that tribunal in the Standard and To- 
bacco cases before proceeding against the 
Steel, the Harvester, and other trusts. 

Mr. Taf t makes this fact quite clear in his 
message of December, 1911. He says: 

"In May last the Supreme Court handed down decisions 
in the suits in equity brought by the United States to enjoin 
the further maintenance of the Standard Oil trust and of 
the American Tobacco trust, and to secure their dissolution. 
The decisions are epoch-making and serve to advise the busi- 
ness world authoritatively of the scope and operation of the 
anti-trust act of 1890. The decisions do not depart in any 
substantial way from the previous decisions of the court in 
construing and applying this important statute, but they 
clarify those decisions by further defining the already admitted 
exceptions to the literal construction of the act. By the de- 
crees they furnish a useful precedent as to the proper method 
of dealing with the capital and property of illegal trusts." 

It has been said that the court by intro- 
ducing into the construction of the statute 
common-law distinctions has emasculated 
it. Mr. Taf t says that this is obviously un- 

167 



THE WRECK 

true, for ^'hj its judgment every contract 
and combination in restraint of interstate 
trade ... is condemned by the statute." 
He goes on to declare that ^'the most ex- 
treme critics cannot instance a case that 
ought to be condemned under the statute 
which is not brought within its terms as 
thus construed." He emphasizes his views 
thus: 

"The test of reasonableness was never applied by the court 
at common law to contracts or combinations or conspiracies 
in restraint of trade whose purpose was or whose necessary- 
effect would be to stifle competition, to control prices, or to 
establish monopolies. The courts never assumed power to say 
that such contracts or combinations or conspiracies might be 
lawful if the parties to them were only moderate in the use 
of the power thus secured and did not exact from the public 
too great and exorbitant prices. It is true that many theo- 
rists, and others engaged in business violating the statute, 
have hoped that some such line could be drawn by courts; 
but no court of authority has ever attempted it. Certainly 
there is nothing in the decisions of the latest two cases from 
which such a dangerous theory of judicial discretion in en- 
forcing this statute can derive the slightest sanction." 

So that, from Mr. Taft's point of view, 
the decisions in the Standard and Tobacco 
cases do not weaken the Sherman law; they 

168 



TAFT AND THE TRUSTS 

^^ clarify" it. This brings Hm to the crim- 
inal sections of the statute: 

"Only in the last three or four years has the heavy hand 
of the law been laid upon the great illegal combinations that 
have exercised such an absolute dominion over many of our 
industries. Criminal prosecutions have been brought and a 
number are pending, but juries have felt averse to convicting 
for jail sentences, and judges have been most reluctant to 
impose such sentences on men of respectable standing in so- 
ciety whose offense has been regarded as merely statutory. 
Still, as the offense becomes better understood and the com- 
mitting of it partakes more of studied and deliberate defiance 
of the law, we can be confident that juries will convict indi- 
viduals and that jail sentences will be imposed." 

This statement is very significant. It 
raises the question of moral conduct on the 
part of judges and juries and holds out the 
hope that as offenses ^ ^become better under- 
stood" ^^ jail sentences will be imposed." It 
also admits that some courts ^^have been 
most reluctant" to impose jail sentences 
^^on men of respectable standing in so- 
ciet,y." 

Thus we come to the very crux of the 
argument made by Commissioner Smith in 
his confidential letter to President Roose- 

169 



THE WRECK 

velt, wherein the Commissioner, a subordi- 
nate executive officer of the Government, as- 
sumed to decide beforehand that the men 
who had organized the Steel and the Har- 
vester trusts were not guilty of criminal 
wrong-doing. Doubtless Mr. Smith, upon 
investigation, had found them, to be ^^men 
of respectable standing in society," and in 
this view he appears to have been sustained 
by President Eoosevelt. 

The num.ber of criminal prosecutions be- 
gun and the number of indictments found 
during the four years of Taft were far in 
excess of those under all previous admin- 
istrations. Many of these cases are still 
pending, and several hundred thousand dol- 
lars have been paid in fines imposed in the 
discretion of the court. 

On the whole it would seem, as Mr. Taft 
has suggested, that in recent years judges 
and juries are coming to realize that the 
framers of the Sherman law knew what 
they were doing. The record shows that 
except under the Roosevelt administration 

170 



TAFT AND THE TRUSTS 

no violators of the law have enjoyed any 
undue leniency on the part of Government 
officials. That the Morgan interests did 
find a friend in President Roosevelt admits 
of no kind of doubt. That these interests 
turned their guns on President Taft when 
in conformity with his oath of office he 
brought suits against them is equally true. 
In summing up, Mr. Taft expresses this 
very clear view of the intent and purpose of 
the anti-trust law : 

"The complaint is made of the statute that it is not suf- 
ficiently definite in its description of that which is forbidden, 
to enable business men to avoid its violation. The suggestion 
is that we may have a combination of two corporations, which 
may run on for years, and that subsequently the Attorney 
General may conclude that it was a violation of the statute, 
and that which was supposed by the combines to be innocent 
then turns out to be a combination in violation of the statute. 
The answer to this hypothetical case is that when men at- 
tempt to amass such stupendous capital as will enable them 
to suppress competition, control prices, and establish a 
monopoly, they know the purpose of their acts. Men do not 
do such a thing without having it clearly in mind." 

Manifestly there can be no kind of doubt 
that the men who organized the Steel Cor- 

171 



THE WRECK 

poration knew ^^tlie purpose of their acts." 
The purpose was to ^^ control prices and es- 
tablish a monopoly." They did not fully 
succeed in this until Roosevelt suspended 
the Sherman law and permitted them to 
absorb their Tennessee rival. Since then 
their power in maintaining prices has been 
omnipotent. The example they have set be- 
fore the business world is equally reprehen- 
sible. 

George W. Perkins knew ^^the purpose 
of his acts" when in 1902 he persuaded the 
McCormicks, the Deerings, the Lisners, and 
other independent manufacturers of farm 
machinerv to combine and establish the 
Harvester monopoly. He knew ''the pur- 
pose of his acts" when, in order that he 
might evade the statutes and decisions in 
regard to *^ manufacture" and ^^distribu- 
tion" by one and the same corporation, he 
organized the International Harvester 
Company ^^of America" to sell and distrib- 
ute the articles manufactured by the Inter- ' 
national Harvester Company of New Jer- 

172 



TAFT AND THE TRUSTS 

sey. The two corporations were organized 
and are still controlled by identically the 
same men. 

This is the same Perkins referred to in 
Herbert Knox Smith's confidential letter 
to Eoosevelt ; the same Perkins with whom 
President Roosevelt directed Mr. Smith, his 
Commissioner, to confer; the same Perkins 
who was 'Agoing to fight" if the Govern- 
ment disturbed his monopoly; the same Per- 
kins who did fight the Taft administration 
because it cited him and other Morgan mo- 
nopolists to court, — the same one indeed 
who is now financing the bull moose up- 
lift ''in the interests of future generations." 
Meanwhile the Harvester monopoly has 
driven all rivals to the wall and paid a $20,- 
000,000 stock dividend in this generation; 
and Perkins is still fighting,— fighting for 
the kind of regulation and supervision that 
Roosevelt gave him from 1902 to 1909. 



173 



MR. WILSON AND HIS PARTY 

IT is too early to venture even an opinion 
concerning President Wilson's admin- 
istration. It will be judged largely by 
the tariff law whicli is now in process of 
making. A year or two hence we shall know 
more about it. Notwithstanding the flood 
of assertion in regard to the dominance of 
^^progressivism" in the Democratic party 
as at present constituted, one is impressed 
with the close resemblance it bears to the 
Democracy of other days. As a whole it 
still clings to the revenue theory in tariffs, 
while not a few of its members, — a larger 
number than formerly, — ^lean heavily to- 
ward protection. 

Like divisions appear to prevail in regard 
to the currency and to foreign policy. As 
to that other disturbing problem, — the rule 
of monopoly, — it would be as difficult to 

174 



MR. WILSON AND HIS PARTY 

find any Democratic member of either 
house of Congress who is not outspokenly 
against the trusts as to pick out a Repub- 
lican or a so-called Progressive who is not 
also opposed to them. Yet. notwithstand- 
ing this unanimity of feeling on the sub- 
ject, no one has come forward with a prac- 
tical remedy for the country's greatest evil. 

The legacy left by Roosevelt, who blew 
both hot and cold on the trust question, 
seems to be accepted as an unwelcome be- 
quest by an overgenerous philanthropist. 
It will be a courageous statesman indeed 
who will assume responsibility for amend- 
ing the Sherman law, and a fortunate one 
who succeeds in enforcing it to the letter. 

As to the spirit of the law, — with the 
growth of monopoly during the past dozen 
years and the blunted sensibilities of the 
people in regard to it; with the apathetic 
conditions resulting from the non-enforce- 
ment of its deterring provisions and conse- 
quentty the aggressive arrogance of the 
foremost monopolists themselves, — in this 

175 



THE WRECK 

sorry situation the present administration 
will find but little of the original spirit in 
it. 

Whether a way can be found to revive it, 
to restore the teeth so dexterously drawn by 
Doctor Roosevelt, is a task that will tax the 
ingenuity of Doctor Wilson. In case the 
administration decides that the anti-trust 
law must be amended in order to make it 
effective the striking out of a few words in 
each of its three first sections might greatly 
simplify matters. 

There is the danger, however, that even 
were the discretionary clauses in regard to 
fines eliminated it would be necessary to re- 
construe the entire statute, and this means 
almost endless litigation. Indeed the mo- 
nopolists themselves are believed to be look- 
ing hopefully forward to any sort of amend- 
ment of the law. It would be worth a bil- 
lion dollars a year to them if it could be 
sent back to the courts, for the trusts know 
the value there is in the law's delay. 

The change from a Republican to a 

176 



MR. WILSON AND HIS PARTY 

Democratic regime brought an interesting 
character to the White House. Woodrow 
Wilson has already demonstrated that he 
has an abundance of courage. As yet not 
even the closest students of politics have 
been able to decide whether it is the right 
sort of courage. It is not the militant 
brand that Roosevelt's admirers still be- 
lieve that he possesses. Therefore it is not 
the furious, the violent kind. Nor is it of 
the subdued order. 

Mr. Wilson wears the air of one having 
complete confidence in himself. He is 
moved by a quiet energy, an alertness that 
is in distinct contrast with the loggy bearing 
of Mr. Taft. True, their physical propor- 
tions are widely dissimilar. Again, Mr. 
Taft's most striking feature is his set smile; 
Mr. Wilson merely looks pleasant. 

The pictures of him do not do him jus- 
tice. The intellectual, almost soulful, light 
that illumined his face when he read his 
tariff address to Congress — it was not a 
message — has never revealed itself to the 

177 



THE WRECK 

camera at special sittings. Should it hap- 
pen that the artist who is to paint his 
portrait for the White House gallery shall 
be fortunate enough to catch him in this 
mood, instead of the homely man portrayed 
in the newspapers and in studio windows 
Mr. Wilson will take rank among our hand- 
somest Presidents. 

As for statesmanship it is evident that he 
must remain a psychological study for some 
time to come. A hasty estimate of his 
capacity in this regard cannot be made with 
a satisfactory degree of accuracy. A well- 
known journalist who came on to attend the 
inauguration asked a member of the press 
gallery : 

^'Whatisheliker^ 

^^He is not like anything else we ever had 
here," was the answer. 

^*Is he steady or is he eccentric, — hyster- 
ical or phlegmatic, arbitrary, dictatorial, or 
calm and yielding'?'' urged the anxious and 
curious visitor. 

^^He's all of them in one, but I am at a 

178 



MR. WILSON AND HIS PARTY 

loss to find a name for it," replied the gal- 
lery scribe. 

When an experienced newspaper man 
fails to classif}^ a new President the case 
is almost hopeless. Eventually no doubt it 
will be found that Woodrow Wilson has a 
normal temperament; that he is the com- 
plete master of self, studiously honest, ex- 
ceptionally methodical, and that he is in no 
danger of being spoiled by the adulatory 
arts usually exercised toward the man in the 
White House. 

It is already quite definitely settled that 
he is a gentleman and a scholar, and that 
he is to maintain his position on a plane of 
respectful dignity in keeping with the 
serious business of government. He gave 
a suggestive hint in this direction in his in- 
troductory remarks on the 8th of April 
when he broke a precedent of more than one 
hundred years' standing and went to the 
Capitol to deliver his tariff address in per- 
son. He said: 



179 



THE WRECK 

"Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Congress: 
I am very glad indeed to have this opportunity of addressing 
the two houses directly, and thereby verifying for myself the 
impression that the President of the United States is a person, 
and not a mere department of the Government, hailing Con- 
gress from some isolated island of jealous authority, sending 
messages instead of speaking with his own natural voice; in 
short, that he is a human being, trying to cooperate with 
other human beings in a common service. Hereafter, after 
enjoying this pleasure and privilege, I shall feel absolutely 
normal in all our dealings with one another." 

The neatness and simplicity of tMs state- 
ment won the admiration of the thousands 
who had gathered in the chamber and in 
the galleries of the House to witness the 
unusual proceeding. More than this, in a 
measure it explained the reason of the 
Democratic party in having selected Mr. 
Wilson as its candidate. To use a phrase 
of his, it is quite evident he does not think 
that ''life consists in eternally running to 
a fire.'' 

In the matter of policies, however, at the 
very outset the President has assumed a 
most difficult task. He is to be commended 
for advising with his party leaders on the 
tariff. Being an apt student, he will learn 

180 



MR. WILSON AND HIS PARTY 

a great deal. He will find that the tariff 
question does not belong in the category of 
the exact sciences. The tariff has been the 
cause of the undoing of many great men, 
and if Mr. Wilson escapes this fate he will 
be very much more fortunate than any of 
his predecessors. He must know even now 
that he cannot escape, and for this reason 
he should be given credit for having that pe- 
culiar courage which enables him to take, 
along with his party associates, his full 
share of responsibility. 

He is too wise even to hope that his party 
will succeed in making an absolutely just 
tariff law. In the present state of society 
such a thing is impossible. Strangely 
enough, neither of the existing political 
organizations stands for a just tariff. 
Exact justice in tariff matters is surely to 
be found somewhere between the line of 
Republican policy and the line of Demo- 
cratic policy. 

On the part of the Republicans the mak- 
ing of tariff laws has been a matter of 

181 



THE WEECK 

barter and trade, one section of interests 
yielding to another section of interests, 
until, as Mr. Wilson said in his address, 
^^we long ago passed beyond the modest 
notion of protecting the industries of the 
country and moved boldly forward to the 
idea that they were entitled to the direct 
patronage of the Government.'' 

On the other hand the Democrats, whose 
political necessities have seldom met with 
financial encouragement from the protected 
industries, have felt that expediency re- 
quired them to resort to oratorical violence 
in denouncing the * iniquitous institution." 
The result is that the two parties have 
gotten themselves farther and farther 
apart on the tariff question, each recogniz- 
ing all along that it was on unstable ground. 

It must be that Mr. Wilson had this sit- 
uation in mind during the last campaign 
when he said repeatedly that '^the Govern- 
ment's fiscal system cannot be materially 
changed." Under all these circumstances, 
if it were possible for him to bring about a 

182 



MR. WILSON AND HIS PAETY 

compromise tariff, — a just tariff, — he would 
write his name far up on the scroll of fame. 

But alas ! such a thing is impossible, even 
if Mr. Wilson favored it, — which may be 
doubted, judging from recent daily press 
reports. It is impossible because the House 
leaders have decided to stick to the old 
Democratic text of ^'a tariff for revenue 
only," although they must know that the 
country will reject such a tariff at the very 
first opportunity. 

A factional disagreement in the Demo- 
cratic party, the outgrowth of pique and 
thwarted ambition, seems as difficult of ad- 
justment as a household disturbance in 
which the opposing forces are mutually 
hopeful that some good neighbor will drop 
in and play the part of pacificator. Woe, 
then, to the pacificator ! 

This being the case, the time has come to 
write ^^ finis" to this story, lest its author 
be mistaken for the good neighbor with 
pacificatory intentions. The President 
saved himself much immediate trouble in 

183 



THE WRECK 

this respect by delegating to Ms cabinet 
ministers the selection of their subordinates, 
holding the head of each department re- 
sponsible for its administration. Time will 
tell whether he is yet to regret his course 
in this regard. 

As suggested in an earlier chapter, the 
predatory interests have their experts 
whose particular business it is to prey upon 
the Government through pliant officials. 
No matter what party is in power the 
^^puU'^ is always the thing. This is the in- 
visible government concerning which the 
general public have little knowledge. It 
works secretly, and we do not know of the 
full scope of its operations until it is too 
late, or until we read that the superservice- 
able officials, at the end of their term, have 
gone to New York and taken places there 
or elsewhere with the trusts at princely 
salaries. 

The Treasury Department in Washing- 
ton is always the object of trust solicitude; 
and it is a remarkable fact that no Treasury 

184 



MR. WILSON AND HIS PARTY 

administration in this generation, unless it 
was Mr. Taft's, has been free from Wall 
Street or corporate connections. Not even 
Mr. Wilson's has escaped, new as it is. 

It was the hope of many sincere friends 
of Mr. Wilson that he would avoid this 
awkward complication by going far away 
from Manhattan Island for his Secretary 
of the Treasury. But he did not do so. 
Mr. McAdoo may turn out to be an excep- 
tion. However, his environment for many 
years back is against him. Environment is 
a potent force. Almost the first act of Sec- 
retary McAdoo was to choose his assistant 
secretary from corporation circles. John 
Skelton Williams is a member of the Mil- 
lionaires' Club, the president of a railway 
company, of two banks, and a leading fi- 
nancial light generally in the mysterious 
Interlocking System whose control extends 
to every line of industry worth while. 

Do the necessities of the Treasury De- 
partment really demand the services of this 
particular Mr. Williams'? Or is this kind 

185 



THE WRECK 

of tiling ^^tlie new freedom" we've been 
reading about ? If so it may not be a great 
while before we shall need a new broom. 
It is here, perhajjs, that President Wilson's 
fine courage will show^ itself. Should it 
turn out that mistakes have been made in 
organizing the Treasury or any other De- 
partment the country will expect Mr. Wil- 
son to correct them. 

Still, it is a most difficult matter to meas- 
ure the forces of endurance in the Demo- 
cratic party. It would seem to thrive best 
on blunders. Wrecks are only a tonic to it. 
If anything could put an end to its exist- 
ence possibly it would be too much reform. 
After all, Mr. Wilson may be a far-seeing 
man. He may realize that future party 
success depends not so much upon the pro- 
gressiveness loudly proclaimed during the 
campaign as upon the more substantial 
things that give politics its effective punch. 
We shall see. 



186 



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